


you're gonna fall (but i'll catch you)

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, F/M, Porn With Plot, do not be misled though, this fic does not include accurate representations of interning at a law firm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:15:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26917957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: “Well, I kinda have some news worth celebrating.”He tugs her an inch closer, and Devi finds herself fixated on his mouth.“I see.”“And I totally could do the party-of-one thing,” she starts.He finishes for her: “But sharing your good fortune with others is often more gratifying.”“Something like that,” she says.or the Oh No I Accidentally Slept with My Coworker the Day Before a New Job AU
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar, Devi Vishwakumar & Nalini Vishwakumar, Fabiola Torres & Devi Vishwakumar & Eleanor Wong
Comments: 66
Kudos: 181





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peterpan_in_neverland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterpan_in_neverland/gifts).



> Rose, my dear, becoming friends with you has truly been one of the bright spots in this strange, unsettling year. So, happy birthday! May you listen to your favorite records, snuggle your cats, and - hopefully - enjoy this fic.
> 
> And of course, thank you to Bethany for her beta skills and for always laughing at my dumb jokes.

“To Devi!” Eleanor exclaims for the dozenth time that night, sliding another round of shots onto the table.

Fabiola accepts one of the glasses with her head cocked. “I thought you went to the bathroom?”

“Yeah, and I had to pass the bar to do so,” Eleanor says, the _duh_ apparent in her voice. She waves at the bartender before dropping down onto the booth next to Devi.

“You guys,” Devi says, eyeing the alcohol. “I thought we agreed that we’d had our last round.”

“But it’s a celebration,” Eleanor says, as if Devi isn’t the one who insisted on this weeknight visit to Corked, their favorite off-campus dive bar. “You just landed the internship of your dreams!”

“After surviving a pretty brutal year,” Fabiola says.

Devi winces, but chooses not to address that last comment. “Think about how trashy it’ll look if I show up to my first day completely hungover.”

Eleanor picks up the shot and makes it dance under Devi’s nose. “You think about how iconic it’ll be of you to outdo everyone else even while hindered by light sensitivity and dehydration.”

_Ugh_.

Devi hates that she’s this easy but, well, Eleanor is speaking her language.

“What the hell,” she says. “To Devi.” And then she grabs the glass from Eleanor and throws back the shot.

“To Devi!” Eleanor and Fabiola both cheer before they down their shots, as well.

“No more,” Devi says, eyes watering from the sting of the alcohol. “I mean it this time.”

Fabiola nods her agreement. “Not all of us are in grad school.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Devi says, as Eleanor’s phone buzzes at her elbow. “You have the job of your dreams. We know.”

“I just think it’s cool,” Fabiola says, “that I got a degree, and now I’m using it in the real world.”

“Okay, tonight is my night, and I don’t want to listen to you wax poetic about robotics.”

Eleanor giggles at her phone as Fabiola scoffs her offense.

Devi snatches the cell out of Eleanor’s hand. “You’re about to ditch me, aren’t you?”

“Why?” Fabiola asks. “What’s happening?”

“Impromptu dance party or something,” Devi says, shoving the phone back at Eleanor.

“Cast bonding is important!” Eleanor protests. “Especially now that our time together is limited.”

“I thought the show was running for, like, a full month,” Devi says, tracing a condensation stain on the sticky tabletop.

“That’s beside the point.”

“I should honestly head out, too,” Fabiola says.

“What?” Devi pouts. “When?”

Fabiola checks her watch. “Pretty much now.”

Devi throws her hands up. “You guys suck! It’s only—” She breaks off as she checks her phone. “Oh, damn.”

“Uh-huh,” Fabiola says. “Jonah’s gonna be so mad if I wake him up on my way in.”

“In that case,” Devi says, “knock over a coat stand for me.”

Fabiola rolls her eyes as she starts to push out of the booth. “Who owns a coat stand anymore?”

Devi wrinkles her nose. “It was the first obnoxiously loud thing I could think of.”

“A coat stand was?” Fabiola asks.

“I like it,” Eleanor says. “It’s very Stooges.”

“Neither of you drive tonight,” Fabiola says, pointing sternly at both of them.

“Yeah, yeah,” Devi says. “We’ll be safe and fine. Go home if you must.”

“El, should I expect you back tonight?”

“Nah, I’ll probably crash at Simone’s.”

Fabiola nods and then heads for the door, pulling her phone out of her pocket as she goes.

“You cool if I call it a night here, too?” Eleanor asks. “I don’t want to miss the big tap number.”

“Fine, fine.” Devi tuts, shaking her head as Eleanor searches for a rideshare. “Go. Everyone abandons me in the end, after all.”

“Okay, well. I respect the melodrama,” Eleanor says. “But you know that’s not what’s happening here.”

“I know,” Devi says with a grin, poking Eleanor in the side.

“You should go home, too, Miss Wants To Make A Good Impression.”

“I’m too wired to sleep,” Devi says honestly.

She’d been kind of numb when she’d first received the call from Gross, Gray & Berman—lawyers to the stars—and even a little sad that her first impulse, to call home, had to be ignored. Now, though, the full implications of this opportunity have had time to settle in, and she feels like a small rock loaded into a slingshot and pulled back as far as she’ll go. Everything about her—from the way her feet are sweating in her flats, leaving her pinkie toe to catch and chafe against the leather, to the way her hair is pinned a little too tight in its bun and her scalp is aching—is begging for a release.

Eleanor studies her for a moment and then raises one eyebrow. “You have some energy to burn off.”

“You could say that again.”

“You know, you never did properly rebound,” Eleanor says gently. “I think you could use a down-and-dirty, no-questions-asked hookup.”

The mention of Paxton, indirect as it is, only serves to wind Devi tighter. “Can it really be considered a rebound at this point?”

Eleanor bites her lip, clearly not wanting to answer the question. “I mean, you can call it whatever you want. Wait, ooh!” Her eyes light up. “Call it a celebration!”

“Yeah,” Devi says. “One that doesn’t have anything to do with…last year.”

“Who even thinks about that anymore,” Eleanor says with affected lightness. “Not you.”

“Damn right!”

“So, point me in a direction,” Eleanor says, scanning the room. “I have the time to vet a guy before my ride gets here.”

Devi frowns. “I can handle that part on my own, I think.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Devi stares at her harder, pointedly waiting for her to get it.

Eleanor pouts. “Fine, so I’m not coy.”

“Understatement.”

“But you’ve successfully avoided men with creepy fetishes for the past six years, so you can’t argue with results.”

“Remember that one dude, Eric?”

“Alright,” Eleanor says, standing. “Find your own hookup.”

Devi raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, I’m gonna.”

Eleanor pauses, rooting around in her purse. A moment later, she tosses a condom at Devi. “Be safe.”

“Classy,” Devi says, but she still takes out her wallet and slides the packet inside.

With a wave, Eleanor heads to the door. It’s hard to tell over the din, but Devi thinks she’s humming _Blow, Gabriel, Blow_ as she goes.

Alone, Devi kicks her feet up onto the ripped upholstery of the opposite bench and lets her eyes wander around the bar.

There’s a bro-type with dreadlocks in a tight yellow t-shirt in the corner, and Devi appreciates the way his muscles strain against the fabric. He’s playing pool with a group of people, though, and she’s not sure she has it in herself to be gregarious enough to win favor with five people at once, not when she’s tight all over and just on the wrong side of anxious.

Her eyes land on a guy at the bar next. He’s fussing with his phone so she can’t properly see his face, but she’s intrigued by his thick, rounded shoulders even as she finds herself put off by his pink-and-blue-striped cardigan.

He seems to either be alone or waiting for someone to show up and, if it’s the latter, she has a limited window in which to get a read on him.

Decision made, she stands, adjusting the inseam of her jeans and shifting her blouse into a comfortable position before approaching.

She hoists herself up on the stool next to him—a surreptitious glance confirming that he’s reasonably attractive with his long eyelashes and his peachy complexion—and flags down the bartender.

“A refill for the gentleman,” Devi says when they make their way over, gesturing to the man’s nearly-empty glass.

He looks up from his phone, lips parted in surprise, and oh _damn_. She feels her heart knock against her ribs when their eyes meet.

As the bartender pours, the dude’s gaze tumbles down over the rest of Devi, and she sits up a little straighter, wondering how she’s measuring up.

“That’s an awfully forward move you’ve got there,” he says finally.

She raises her eyebrows. “You’re complaining?”

He shrugs. “Not yet.”

Annoyance pricks at the palms of her hands, prompting her to curl them around his glass and take a sip of his drink. Scotch. 

She swallows with poor grace, frowning. “How about now?”

The dude’s eyes are emitting sparks of amusement. “Still no. You?”

“I can think of a couple complaints, yeah.”

He shifts on the stool, angling himself toward her, and she snorts when she realizes he’s wearing a bubble-gum pink button up shirt that matches the stripes of his cardigan exactly. Who is this guy?

“So, why not just walk away?” he asks—or challenges, really.

Devi feels her nostrils flare, but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge the question. Instead, she asks one of her own. “What’s your deal?”

He tilts his head. “I’m sorry?”

“The drink screams pretentious douchebag,” Devi says, “but the clothes…you look like a middle schooler who woke up and decided they were gonna be a film major one day.”

The guy throws his head back as he laughs, Adam’s apple jumping, and Devi flushes full-body hot.

“That’s what does it for you, huh?” he asks, and for a second, her alcohol-impaired brain goes shock-still trying to calculate the probability that he’d felt her temperature rise. “Fourteen-year-old future film majors?”

Oh, right.

“Presumptuous,” she says—challenges.

“You bought me a drink.”

“And, what, you’ve slept with every person who’s ever given you a glass of water?”

“Every last one of them,” he says somberly.

Her laugh stumbles out of her even though she tries to catch it before it topples onto the bar between them.

He watches in amusement, all pursed lips and glinting eyes.

“I’m Ben,” he says.

“Dude!” She whacks him on the arm, dimly registering that there might be something worth getting a closer look at under his goofy cardigan. “I did not ask.”

He frowns at her, rubbing pitifully at the spot where her hand connected. “Does that mean you’re not going to tell me your name?”

“Duh,” she says. “We’re in a strictly use-and-lose kind of scenario here.”

His lips twitch into an almost-smile. “Presumptuous.”

Devi reaches out for his drink again, rotating the glass around and around as she says, “Yeah, well. My friend had this stupid idea.”

“Ah, so you have stupid friends,” he says, nodding. “A piece of the puzzle falls into place.”

She levels him with a glare. “Not cool.”

“They’re your words,” he says.

“I said her _idea_ was stupid, not her.”

“Fine. What’s your brilliant friend’s stupid idea?” He hooks his foot around one of the spokes of her stool as he asks, his ankle brushing against her calf.

“Well, I kinda have some news worth celebrating.”

He tugs her an inch closer, and Devi finds herself fixated on his mouth.

“I see.”

“And I totally could do the party-of-one thing,” she starts.

He finishes for her: “But sharing your good fortune with others is often more gratifying.”

“Something like that,” she says.

“Where does the stupid part come in?”

She pulls her eyes up to his. “Outsourcing gratification is…a gamble.”

He offers a disbelieving little laugh. “You want me to guarantee I’m going to get you off?”

She shrugs. “I don’t like operating with unclear expectations.”

He considers that with a thoughtful grin. Devi thinks about nipping at his lip.

“In that case,” he says with a nod, leaning in until his mouth is at her ear and lowering his voice. “I’m expecting you to be pretty bossy, and you can expect me to excel at following directions.”

His breath tickles her earlobe, and it makes her pulse behave like a line of dominoes, clacking through her extremities and down to the pit of her stomach where it culminates in one final thud.

She lets out a shaky breath, too affected to be mad that she’s letting him win this with minimal effort. “Works for me.”

###

The dude—Ben, she corrects herself begrudgingly, because if she has his name, it’s kind of skeezy of her not to use it, right?—climbs ahead of her into the rideshare, and Devi openly ogles his ass, his thighs.

He smirks at her after she pulls the backseat door closed like he knows what she’d been doing.

“Am I allowed to ask what you’re celebrating?” he says after a moment.

She pretends to think for a moment. “No.”

He licks his lips. “Do you oppose me making something up?”

She plants her palm in the center of the free seat and leans her weight into it. “Why is it so important to you?”

She wants to wade into that look in his eyes, let the warmth overtake her inch by inch. “I like a good narrative.”

“This is real life, dude.”

“Real life has calls to adventure, too,” he says, tugging his seatbelt forward a measure so he can lean in, too.

She pulls back a fraction, studying him. “Oh, my god, you’re a total nerd.”

He rolls his eyes, and a blush drags a pink-tipped paintbrush across the tops of his cheeks. “Disparage all you want, but I am currently living proof of the fact.”

“ _Disparage_ ,” Devi says back mockingly. “That’s such a nerdy th—”

She sucks the rest of the sentence in on a gasp as his fingers dig into the back of her neck, pressing her into him.

He pulls away just as she’s about to really melt into the kiss, a kiss that holds all the promise of an opening line of a novel.

He’s grinning like he can see what she’s thinking, and that makes her once again too aware of how tight, tight, tight she feels.

“You were saying?”

“That you’re clearly a nerd,” she says, eyes glued to his smiling mouth.

“Maybe so,” he says. “Will you go on an adventure with me anyway?”

“I’m letting you whisk me off to an undisclosed location, aren’t I?”

“So far,” he says, letting his hand fall away from her neck. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if you shimmered out of existence like a mirage.”

“Or tucked and rolled right out of the car.”

“Please don’t do that,” their driver says.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “I don’t even have a name to give to the EMTs.”

“Is that your not-so-subtle way of asking again?” She raises her eyebrows. “Because it’s totally not gonna work.”

He shrugs. “I’ll just go ahead and assume you’re a god, then. Older than language itself and cursed to walk the earth without a name.”

Devi rolls her eyes. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of unpleasant to be around?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She snorts, about to sling something back. But before she even opens her mouth, his expression—he’s watching her like she’s fading out right before his eyes—stops her.

The look fastens itself to her heart. She tries to squirm away from it, but the hook of his—is it sadness, or something a little more complicated than that?—scrapes at the tissue, anyway.

“What am I the god of?” she asks after a beat.

He cocks an eyebrow. “As far as I can tell? Casual sex.”

Their driver grumbles, turning up his music a few notches.

Ben’s expression hasn’t fully warmed back up, so Devi swallows down her _you’d better hope so_ in favor of saying, “Legend has it that whatever suitor a casual sex god goes home with gets to pick their name for the duration of their time together.”

A smile plays on the edge of his lips, just deep enough to suggest a dimple. “Of course a god wouldn’t have just one name.”

“I mean, right?” she says, feeling a rush of relief that she tells herself has everything to do with the fact that hooking up with a sad person just isn’t as fun.

And there’s definitely something to that, if the way he’s looking at her—like he can’t wait to open her up, comb through her page by page, and learn every secret she’s collected on her travels—makes her shiver is any indication.

She’s about to ask him what it’s going to be when the car comes to a stop in front of an apartment building.

“Yours?” she checks.

He nods, tossing an apologetic smile at their driver before pushing out of the car.

She hesitates only a second before following him.

###

“Sorry about the clutter,” Ben says as he unlocks the door to his apartment.

Devi snorts when she steps inside, taking in the mail-laden table next to the small square of tiled foyer and the little white hallway of a kitchen beyond. “I don’t know what you’re talking about; this place is cleaner than mine.”

“Well,” he says, turning on a couple lights and then shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “I’m sure gods have more important things to do besides clean.”

“Right,” she says, shifting her weight. Now that she’s here, in this nice-ass apartment with its recently vacuumed carpet and hella plush sectional, everything feels bright and immediate and a little intimidating.

“I can, uh—” He falters. “You want a drink?”

“Okay,” she agrees, and then she checks the time when he turns his back. This has the potential to be a really bad idea, and she should probably walk back out the door and fall into her own bed and masturbate before falling into a deep, restful sleep for approximately five hours before she has to get up for work.

After a second, eyes trained on the doorknob, she pries her flats off and drops them next to the door. There’s a blister on the top of her left pinkie toe.

The kitchen laminate is cool and smooth beneath the soles of her feet.

“My—oh!” Ben startles when he turns from the fridge to find her standing behind him.

“Sorry,” she says, talking a step back.

“No, it’s…here.”

She accepts the can of beer he hands her but doesn’t open it, just rolls it between her palms. “What were you gonna say?”

He nudges the fridge shut with his foot and leans against the counter. “Huh?”

She starts to shake her head, but his eyes brighten with recognition just a moment later.

“Oh, right, my roommate.” Ben’s throat bobs as he swallows. “He’s out of town, so.”

“We’re alone,” Devi concludes.

“Yeah.”

She cocks her head at him. “Well, then what are you waiting for?”

“I’m not sure,” he admits, staring down at his sneakers. After a moment, he drags his eyes back up to her. “Instructions, I think. You?”

“What am I waiting for?”

He nods.

She blinks. “A name.”

He laughs, a soft, muted laugh that barely carries through the space between them, and then his eyes are studying her, from the top of her head to the blister on her toe.

Devi’s fingers curl into the beer can, her grip so tight she’s surprised it doesn’t pop under the pressure.

“Athena.”

She raises her eyebrows. “She’s already the god of something, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t hooking up.”

“You could always tell me your real name if you’re that disappointed.”

The challenge in his voice sends determination oozing honey-thick and warm into the pit of her stomach. She sets the unopened beer down on the counter with a metallic _smack_.

He watches her approach with the same surprised expression he’d worn the moment their eyes met, and all Devi can think about as she crowds him against the counter—the dull edges biting into her palms as she grips it tight on either side of him—is sinking her teeth into his lower lip. Instead of kissing him, though, she rests her forehead against his.

Ben’s hands find her hips, infusing the denim with warmth. When his breath shudders gently as he draws in air to speak, she grins.

“We’ve got kind of a halting rhythm going here.”

Devi closes her eyes. “Okay, you really need to work harder at making me want to seduce you.”

“Do I though?” Devi peeks out from under her lashes to find his eyes shimmering with amusement. “You approached me, remember?”

She presses forward, slipping her knee between his thighs. “I’m a god, right? Shouldn’t you want to impress me?”

“Shouldn’t you be overwhelming me with awe?” he says back, fingers flexing against her.

“Well, I would, but I just don’t want to _presume_ anything.”

“Go ahead,” he says. “Amaze me. I’m—” He cedes the rest of his sentence to a kiss.

Devi doesn’t waste her time with daintiness, with first-sentence-of-a-novel kissing. She skips right to _in medias res_ , lips and teeth and heart racing to find the thread of plot. It sends a thrill down her spine when she realizes he’s right there with her, vying for the proverbial pen with greedy hands and a sharp tongue.

When they fall in sync, catching each other at just the right angle, Devi feels a moment of clarity so exhilarating—the rest of the evening stretching out ahead of her, beckoning and unwritten—a moan surges out of her.

Ben breaks away to laugh against her cheek, lips finding the hinge of her jaw.

Suddenly, all the alcohol she’d had earlier reasserts its presence.

“Um,” Devi says, thoughts sloshing, incomplete, through her head. “Bathroom?”

“Gods have to use the bathroom?” He asks the lobe of her ear and, stupidly enough, it makes her shiver.

He hums, clearly noticing.

She takes a step back. “I will just leave, you know.”

Grinning like he knows she’s lying, he jerks his head toward the living room. “C’mon, it’s right down the hall.”

She follows him a few paces down a short hallway before he stops in front of an open door and flips on the light.

“Thanks,” she says.

“I’ll be down here,” he says, jabbing his finger over his shoulder. “When you finish up.”

She nods before slipping inside and closing the particle-board thin door behind her.

The toilet seat is up, and the tiny cupboard of a room is not nearly as clean as the living space. With a frown, Devi flips the seat down and then lines it with toilet paper.

She places her open palm on her chest as she pees, willing her heart to slow down. It thuds insistently.

And that’s distracting enough from the grime of the bathroom that she even manages an excited smile—that is until she makes eye contact with the mirror above the sink. She’s far too embarrassing to look at when she’s like this. Horny or crazed or…some adrenaline-pumping combination of the two.

As she dries her hands, she schools her features into something stern and serious.

_You are going to have satisfying but ultimately meaningless sex_ , she thinks at her reflection, _and then tomorrow you take the next steps in your inevitably glamorous career, where you won’t need anyone’s approval but your own_.

Her reflection looks unconvinced, but Devi refuses to dwell on thoughts of Nalini. Not tonight.

When she steps back into the hall, she notices there’s light pouring out of the cracked door at the end of it.

Ben’s room is modestly furnished—bed, desk, nightstand, and a chest with a built-in bookshelf—but there’s something about it that gives off a moneyed appearance. Or maybe she only thinks that because all the furniture in her studio is from Walmart.

Devi steps further inside, noticing a cork board full of pictures over the desk. She thinks she recognizes Ben posing with Alicia Keys, and she walks toward it. Definitely Alicia—and Kanye West and a group that’s probably a band, though she doesn’t recognize them.

The top of the desk is littered with highlighted articles and about a million notecards. She’d pretty much assumed anyway, but it’s nice to have proof that Ben’s a student.

When she reaches the bed, she sits and sinks into the thick duvet. Where the hell did he go?

She looks around the room again, eyes landing on the nightstand. Two books sit on the edge, both of them featuring titles that scream dragons and quests.

Leaning in closer, Devi thinks she recognizes one of them as the novel upon which the Netflix show Fabiola keeps insisting she should watch is based.

She picks it up. Ben is over two-thirds of the way through it and using a basketball game ticket as a bookmark.

She jolts when a door opens to her right and suddenly he’s there.

“What the hell, dude? Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”

He raises his eyebrows. “I was in the bathroom.”

“Why’d you make me use that gross one out there if you have one in your room?”

He turns off the bathroom light with a snort. “I don’t know. Probably because you seem like the type to snoop.”

“That is—like, wow. Rude.”

He grins, nodding at the book in her hands.

“Whatever,” she says, slapping it back down on the nightstand. “It’s a girl’s right to snoop in a one-night-stand’s medicine cabinet.”

“Oh really?” he asks, taking a seat next to her.

“Yes, really,” she says, standing. “In the name of safety. What if there are knives in there?”

He reaches over to straighten the angle of the book. “Who keeps knives in their medicine cabinet?”

Devi rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. People you don’t want to sleep with because they’d totally murder you.”

“I mean, maybe if you’d gone with razors or something actually plausible, I’d have conceded your point. But no one keeps knives in their bathroom.”

She pauses, blinking at him. “Are you planning to muder me with razors?”

“What? No!”

“I’m going to check.”

He catches her wrist before she can take more than a step and spins her back toward him. She stumbles her way into the space between his thighs, catching herself on his shoulders.

“Whoa.”

“Everyone has razors in their bathroom,” he says, exasperated but smiling.

“So you admit that you’re planning to murder me,” she says, starting to lose the thread of the snit, distracted as she is by the vertigo of looking down into his eyes. 

“I admit to having to shave, you paranoid weirdo.”

In the warm light of his bedside lamp, they’re more of an indigo than an azure, and she feels for a disorienting moment like she’s standing at the mouth of a well. Or a rabbit hole.

“It’s not paranoia,” she says with absolutely no bite at all. “Casual encounters are dangerous for a woman.”

His eyes glint, inviting her to fall in. “What about a god?”

She laughs despite herself. “We tend to fare better.”

“Prove it,” he says, teasing.

“Okay,” she says, and then willingly topples over into the abyss.

He catches her, lips parted and ready, and she doesn’t try to out-maneuver him this time. She simply lets him guide her fall with his nudging compass of a nose and parachute-drag gasps.

She tries to step even closer to him when his hands curl around the backs of her thighs and smooth up—stopping just shy of grabbing at her ass—but there’s no room. So she settles for digging her fingers into his shoulders, which prompts him to trace his way back to the seams of her jeans and dance his fingers up under her blouse.

When the cool, clammy pads of his fingers make contact with her waist, she feels her skin tighten with goosebumps.

He laughs against her mouth, and then ducks his head, hiding his lips from her reach. 

“Can I take this off?” he says, fingering the hem of her blouse.

She pulls up straight and, without a word, tugs the shirt up over her head.

He’s staring up at her like maybe he’s just as lost in Wonderland and couldn’t give a damn about finding his way back through the looking glass.

“I feel like I should be, I don’t know, laying flowers at your feet or supplicating or something?”

Caught between the urge to roll her eyes and laugh, she ends up letting out a completely unflattering honk of a snort. It makes Ben grin, though.

She clears her throat.

“What would you beg for?” she asks, pushing her hand through his hair.

He leans into the touch, eyes falling closed. “Fuck.”

“Seems appropriate,” she says, mocking tone belied by how breathless she feels. “I am the god of casual hooking-up, after all.”

He opens his eyes again. The heat there makes her throat dry.

“Tell me what comes next.”

Devi swallows, letting her nervy excitement work through her limbs—an eager, all-over burn. “You’re going to go down on me.”

Ben’s nostrils flare, and he gets this intrigued look that she feels between her legs. “Yeah. I can do that.”

He reaches for the button of her jeans and, as he tugs them down her legs, slides off the bed onto his knees. After tugging the pants off both her ankles and tossing them away, he looks up at her.

Her chest rises steeply when their eyes meet.

Maintaining the eye contact, he traces one finger along the elastic band of her underwear. “Now these, right?”

“In a second,” Devi says, still not totally in control of her breathing. “Your stupid cardigan has to go first.”

He laughs, and she feels the warm air ghost over the insides of her thighs. Goosebumps follow.

“The middle-school film-buff look is no longer doing it for you, huh?”

“It was never doing it for me,” she says.

He’s grinning as he shrugs the cardigan off and folds it over the edge of the bed. She registers distractedly that, yeah, he has nice arms.

Once his eyes focus back on her face, he says, “But something about me definitely is.”

It’s not a question, so she doesn’t answer it like one. “I mean, if you’re fishing for feedback, so far I’m not very impressed with your listening skills.”

He raises his eyebrows and says, “Fine, then,” before taking hold of her hips and licking at her over the fabric of her underwear.

She gutters like a disrupted candle flame, as much from the surprise as the heat of his tongue.

And then he starts nipping gently at her, catching more cotton than skin, and she has to grab the edge of the nightstand to keep herself upright.

“H-hey,” she says, after a second.

He hums after flattening his tongue against her again. “Hmm?”

“You can take those off now, you know.”

“Sure,” he says easily, pulling off her. “I was only awaiting my instructions.”

“Oh, my god,” she says, unable to offer anything more articulate about how ridiculous he’s being as he discards the underwear.

“Anything else, boss?” He’s looking up at her face, fingers gripping her hips so hard, she suspects he might be leaving a permanent impression in her bones.

Her eyes flutter closed. “Don’t call me that.”

“Okay, Athena.”

She forces her eyes back open to find that he’s still watching her. The rabbit-hole vertigo is back.

Or maybe that’s just the alcohol.

He raises his eyebrows, and then she can no longer look at him because he buries himself in her, sharp tongue picking up the thread of their story as if not a moment’s passed.

A groan shoves its way forward from the back of her throat, and Ben grunts in response—with approval or pride, she can’t tell. She suspects it’s more of the former than the latter for the way he swirls his tongue around her clit.

With all his determination suddenly focused on stimulating the most nerve endings he can at once, she starts to feel faint. Like maybe she is the mirage he suspected her to be, phasing steadily out of existence. She tangles her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck with the hand not hanging onto the nightstand for dear life like that’ll somehow ground her to reality.

It doesn’t. Mere seconds later, she loses touch with time and space and her entire concept of self.

Being put back in touch with her body is like breaking the surface of a frigid pool from great heights—too much sensory input all at once.

Ben doesn’t even seem to notice her whine of protest, though. She has to tug sharply at his hair to pull him off her. He gasps for air as soon as he’s disengaged, and her entire body quivers in response.

“Jello legs,” she explains off his raised eyebrows.

He nods, dragging his forearm across his mouth before standing, using his grip on her hips as leverage. She sways, and then suddenly his face is crowding her field of vision and all she can look at is his glistening upper lip.

“Fuck me,” she says, closing her eyes.

He laughs and for a moment, she assumes she’s getting so caught up in the sound that it feels like the world is whooshing past her. But then her back hits the mattress and she realizes the whooshing was actually Ben whirling her around.

She squeezes her eyes shut harder and grabs her head in both her hands. “Oh, god. Everything’s spinning.”

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding very sorry at all, and then she feels the mattress dip. Before she fully recovers her bearings, his hands are on her knees and his breath is back at the inside of her thighs.

“Oh, god,” she repeats, speaking before he even licks into her. “You’re just gonna keep—!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, god.” She flings one arm out, grabbing a fistful of pillow, and glances down her body. His hair’s not exactly shaggy, but it’s long enough to flop down over his forehead, obscuring his face from her view.

Letting go of the bedding, she pushes her fingers into his hair, combing it back. He glances up at her, looking-glass eyes glinting with concentration, and she wants to look away because it’s too, too much—seeing the _intent_ in his eyes—but instead, her whole body jerks and she’s coming again.

He’s actually the one to break the eye contact, his eyes drifting closed as he eases her out of the moment, tsunami-sized swipes of his tongue slowly giving way to gentle lapping.

She sinks into the mattress, fired-slingshot content.

The whole world is still and silent for a long moment. Then, “What’s next?”

Devi’s responding guffaw is so loud, it lingers in the room a few seconds after she stops laughing.

“I don’t know what that means,” Ben says, trailing kisses up from between her legs to her stomach. His stubble, faint though it is around the curve of his jaw, drags at her skin, making her twitch.

“It means slow down, dude,” she says, drawing in a shaky breath. “Gotta…gotta breathe.”

He hums, resting his head against her ribs. “I wonder what good fortunes await me.”

She blinks a couple times. “Huh?”

“Well, I just took a god’s breath away. You gotta figure there’s some good karma in that.”

“Oh, jeez,” she says. “Let’s not get carried away, okay? You were adequate.”

He lifts his head. “Do you deny that your bosom is full-on heaving right now?”

“Don’t say shit like that to me,” she says, turning his head away from her with her palm planted firmly on his cheek because he’s making too much earnest eye contact and, yeah, it’s harder to hide the fact that her bosom is full-on heaving with him watching her like that.

“Because you can’t take that I’m right?” he asks, sounding like he already knows the answer.

“Alright,” Devi says, pushing at his shoulder. It takes him a couple shoves to get the hint but, when he finally does, he rolls over into the empty spot next to her. She hosits herself up so she can straddle him. “I’ve decided what we’re going to do next.”

His eyes smooth their way down her body, making her skin-pricklingly aware of the fact that she’s in nothing but a bra while he’s fully clothed.

“And what’s that?” he asks after a long beat.

“Teach you some respect,” she says. And then she rips his shirt open.

A couple of the buttons ping off the lamp on his nightstand, making it wobble.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Devi says, grinning.

Ben scoffs, but he doesn’t sound all that put out when he says, “You just ruined a perfectly good shirt.”

She leans down to rub her lips along the line of his sternum, familiarizing herself with him. “Get Kanye to buy you a new one.”

“Knew you were nosy,” he says, laughter in his voice. Definitely not put out, then.

She bites down on his nipple.

“Holy shit,” he says, his body jerking in response.

She grinds her hips down to meet his.

“What-what the fuck?” he asks, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“I told you,” she says, and then flicks her tongue against him before continuing. “We’re teaching you some respect.”

“This feels more like bullying.”

She snorts as she sits up, shifting down his legs so she can unbuckle his belt. “You’re not enjoying yourself?”

“I didn’t say that,” he says as she shifts again, shoving his jeans down his thighs. He helps her, wriggling them down a few more inches.

She watches him curiously as he sits up—as best he can with her at his hips, anyway, the muscles in his stomach taut—and reaches around her to tug his pants all the way off.

“You’re kinda ripped,” she says, pressing her palm flat against his stomach as he falls back, feeling the muscles release.

“You sound surprised,” he says, reaching for the nightstand and tugging open one of the drawers. “And I think I’m offended.”

“Oh, should I _supplicate_ to make you feel better?”

Those dangerous eyes of his shine with amusement as he passes her a foil packet. “You really hate my vocabulary, don’t you?”

She tucks the condom into the strap of her bra so she can appreciate the slopes of his abdomen with both hands. “Maybe not _hate_.”

His eyebrows jump with surprise. “Oh, you _love_ _it_ , actually.”

“Shut up,” she says, feeling herself flush hot for some reason. “I do not.”

He’s giggling—actually _giggling_. “You do so.”

“Shut up,” she repeats, shifting her weight forward so the heels of her palms press uncomfortably hard against his stomach. “This is so disrespectful.”

His fingers skate up her thighs, hands coming to rest at the swell of her hips and pressing her back. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Maybe I’ll blow your mind,” she says, and then grinds down into him.

The thin material of his boxers shifts under her movement, and she grins.

Evidently unable to let her have the last word, he says, voice rumbling like an avalanche about to be set in motion, “Tell me your name, then.”

It’s like he’s trying to get them lost in the rockslide of her temper.

“You’re like a dog with a bone,” she says, digging her nails into his skin.

“More like a dog with a b—”

She moves one of her hands to cover his mouth. “Do not.”

He kisses her palm and the gesture makes her heart squirm. She snatches her hand away.

Eyebrows raised, he asks, “So does this mean you’re not going to tell me?”

“I think I’ve been pretty upfront about that, yeah.” She scrapes one nail down the center of his chest all the way to his belly button, pressing hard enough to summon an angry red line and a smattering of goosebumps. “How about you drop it?”

“Dunno if I can,” he says, his hands flexing. Pressing her down on him again.

“Why the fuck not?” she asks, curling over him so she can drop a kiss beside his belly button before scraping her fingers through the strip of coarse hair leading down into his boxers.

His torso expands with a sharp breath, and he speaks before letting it out so his voice deflates midway through the sentence. “Being told I can’t have something tends to make me want it more.”

She glances up from toying with the elastic band of his boxers. “Is that why you’re _throbbing with desire_ right now?”

His response to the line—a needy little whine—floods her low-belly with warm satisfaction.

She laughs. “Huh.”

He blushes. “What?”

“You may not be beyond hope,” she says, snapping the band. “Maybe I’ll teach you some respect, after all.”

She watches him swallow thickly, waiting for him to offer a rebuttal. When, after a beat, he doesn’t, she grins, tugs off his boxers, and then rips open the condom.

He watches her with his lips parted and his eyes wide.

“Good boy,” she says, and then she sinks down onto him.

“Shit,” Ben says, his whole body pulling tight under her—like he’s the string of a bow and she’s his notched arrow. “Holy fucking shit.”

She stares at his face, twisted up with the kind of pain that comes from getting too much of what you wanted most, and then throws her head back with laughter.

“Glad to hear,” he says, gritting his teeth as she starts bouncing lightly on her knees, “you’re having a good time, too.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, planting her hands, fingers splayed on his ribs. “You’re fun.”

“Not unpleasant to be around?” he asks, his hands finding her waist once more.

“Eh,” she starts, and the noise comes out a little more like a breathy moan than she’d intended as she presses down on him at just the right angle. “Think you’re one of those special people.”

“In what way?” he asks with a grunt, arching his hips.

“Unpleasant and charming at the same time.”

His fingers press into her skin, and she finds she likes the kind of rag-doll feeling she gets, having him handle her like this. She fits so neatly in his grasp.

“You think,” he says, and her eyes land on his face in time to see a Cheshire smile unfurling, “I’m roguish, do you?”

She curls her fingers in, the skin under her nails going pale with the effort of keeping herself balanced overtop of him. “Didn’t say that.”

“That’s the archetype, though.”

She finds herself smiling back. “The charmingly unpleasant archetype.”

His hands smooth up to her breasts, cupping them over her bra. “Exactly.”

She lets her head loll forward, enjoying the way the warmth of his palms seeps into the material for a moment. When fatigue starts to curl through her limbs like fog, though—her movements becoming erratic—she removes her hands from his chest to cover his. Locking their fingers, she guides him down her body, encouraging him to grab onto her ass.

“Need you to steer,” she tells him.

“God,” he says, and his voice cracks.

“Has anyone ever told you,” Devi says, grunting as he does this squeeze-and-thrust maneuver that nearly sends her shooting off—an arrow speeding toward the bullseye. She clamps tight around him, though, trying to stave off the orgasm. Trying to hold herself in place on his bow-taut body. “That you give yourself away too easily?”

He doesn’t answer the question, furrowing his brow with concentration as he bites his lower lip. It reminds her that she’d wanted to be the one to turn his shell pink lips dusty rose with nibbling bruises.

She falls forward, her palms sinking into a pillow as they land on either side of his head, and his grip on her ass tightens. They falter for a moment, their rhythm breaking as they adjust to the new angle. And just when they’re finding it again, she feels the muscles in her arms protest.

She gives into their whining, her forehead pressing against Ben’s as she lets her weight rest more completely on top of him.

“Tired?” he asks, panting.

Instead of answering, she latches onto his lip with her teeth and tugs.

The shout he emits is accompanied by a deep curling of his hips.

_Oh, shit_.

She comes like an arrow that falls immediately to the ground after its bow’s snapping release—clumsy and anticlimactic, though no less spent. And, having lost the will to put effort into holding herself up, Devi drops fully onto him, tucking her face into his neck.

With just a couple more thrusts, she feels Ben start to wobble into his orgasm and peppers kisses into the sweat-slick skin, encouraging him along.

He, too, goes pliant as soon as the moment passes.

The stillness that fills the room afterward is so peaceful, she doesn’t even realize she’s drifting off until he speaks, starling her.

“Is getting too tired and giving up halfway through sex how you usually strike awe in others’ hearts?”

“You liked it,” she says. It’s not her best comeback of the night, but she’s sunk too far into her brain’s cocktail of alcohol-and-sex chemicals to care.

He hums—which Devi manages to notice is not a denial even though her entire body is insisting that it’s bedtime. Then, after a beat, one of his hands smooths up from the base of her spine to the space between her shoulder blades and rests there.

“You know,” he says after a few seconds pass, a rueful quality to his voice, hushed though he’s speaking, “spending the night doesn’t really seem compatible with a _use-and-lose_ attitude.”

She grunts, annoyed that he’s right and with how comfortable he is and that this is his bedroom, and—with great reluctance—pushes herself back upright. He keeps one hand hovering around her waist, guiding her as she eases up off of him, and then rolls off the bed as soon as she’s no longer pinning him in place.

The bathroom door shuts a moment later.

She blinks at it, acknowledging to herself that this would be the perfect time to get the fuck out of dodge. But the effort it costs her to even imagine herself gathering her clothes and tugging them on, let alone to do it, coaxes her to curl up on the plush duvet instead.

The bathroom door opens just as she lets her eyes close, and she listens to Ben’s footfalls as he crosses the room.

A beat.

“I’ll move any second now,” she says to him. “I swear.”

“I mean.” He pauses. “You don’t have to.”

“Dope.”

He laughs. “I’ll take the couch.”

“I mean,” she says, “you don’t have to.”

She feels him hesitate.

“Yeah?”

She nods.

A moment later, the bedside lamp clicks off, and then he’s crawling over her—taking care not to make more skin-to-skin contact than necessary.

“This is weird,” Ben says, some indeterminable amount of time after he’s settled. “Not knowing what to do with my hands in my own bed.”

She’s too far gone into sleep to give him any advice.

###

“This is too many place settings,” Devi says, standing at the head of a table that fills her entire apartment, that pins her against the wall.

“How do you know?” her mom asks her.

Devi shakes her head, trying to concentrate and count—Fabiola, Eleanor, Mom, and, and, and—but there’s a television nearby. A tennis match is blaring through the thin walls.

“I—”

“Have less tea,” Nalini says, and Devi frowns at her.

Paxton bursts through the door and falls face-first onto the table then.

Nalini clucks her tongue at him. “I told him not to get attached.”

Devi tries to reach out, to call to him, but she finds her wrists are pinned by the table as well and her tongue is too thick to speak.

“I want to meet Mohan,” Paxton says, his voice coming from the too-loud television. His body is too still on the table.

“Oh, no, no,” Nalini says. “We can’t let him see Devi like this.”

_But I want to see him_ , Devi tries to insist. Her lips feel as heavy as lead.

Nalini laughs at her, the chill of it freezing Devi from the inside out.

###

Devi wakes with a start, with a gasp that turns into a full-body shudder. Her head is filled with white-hot pain, but she’s clammy-cold everywhere else. Why didn’t she get under the covers before falling asleep?

With an effort, she lifts her head to check the time. The clock on the nightstand displays a bright, red 3:23.

“Shit,” she says, alarmed by how dry and cotton-thick her mouth feels. But at least she still has the power of speech.

Someone sighs behind her, and Devi jerks, falling off the bed with a surprised yelp. When she gets her bearings—and her brain exits its tilt-a-whirl simulation—she sits up to find…oh, right.

“Shit,” she says again, staring at Ben, whose face is squished into the top of the pillow he’s cuddling to his chest.

Jerking her eyes away, she pushes herself up onto her knees and, as her eyes continue to adjust to the darkness, gropes around for her jeans. Her cell should be in the back pocket…

“Gotcha,” she says, lighting it up, and, yup, it’s still half past three in the morning.

Ignoring her various notifications, Devi uses the extra light to locate the rest of her clothes and then the bathroom.

She lets out a barking laugh after flipping on the light switch and finding herself face-to-face with a _Rick and Morty_ themed shower curtain. Watching it with wide-eyes, she lifts the toilet lid and perches on the seat.

After she washes her hands and—what the hell—takes a curious snoop through Ben’s toiletries, she dresses and switches off the light.

She’s not sure what it is, exactly, that makes her pause in the doorway of his bedroom and consider writing a note. Gratitude, certainly, because she hadn’t been lying when she’d told him he was fun. But something else, too. Something quite like fondness.

Devi glances back at him. He hugs the pillow he’s snuggling closer.

The image of an unmoving Paxton lying face-down on top of the dream tea party fills her mind then, and she turns and darts from the room.

It’s better for both of them if they never speak again, Devi tells herself as she shoves her feet into her flats and orders a car back to the bar. Healthier.

By the time she’s racing up the stairs of her own apartment building, intent on a shower, she’s sounding damn convincing.

###

“All I need now is a voided check, and then you can get back to work,” the lady from HR Devi’s been sitting with for nearly ninety minutes says. Grubbs something, Devi thinks.

She feels a throb of guilt around her eyes for not knowing for sure, but the woman had come to collect Devi from the cramped broom-closet of an office she’d been shown to first thing in the morning—before Devi had even had the chance to go wandering around for the mentioned kitchen to make herself coffee—so she hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders for the duration of their working relationship.

“Cool beans,” Devi says tiredly, and then freezes in the act of opening up her portfolio—which she’d prepped before meeting Fab and El at Corked last night, thank god. “I mean, uh, yes, of course. Ma’am.”

The woman looks like she’s suppressing a smile as Devi slides the check across the conference room table. Devi wonders if it’s totally obvious how hungover she is.

“I’ll email you copies once all your paperwork’s been finalized,” Grubbs says, standing.

“Thank you,” Devi says, gathering her own things without making eye contact. When she looks up again, the woman is gone.

Stepping back out into the hallway, Devi hugs her portfolio to her chest and looks around the second floor of the Gross, Gray & Berman headquarters. Plenty of conference rooms identical to the one she’d just stepped out of, cubicles, and filing cabinets, but absolutely no sign of a break room.

Taking advice from the nervous swoop in her stomach, Devi rides the elevator back up to the sixth floor. But she’s only stopping by her office, she tells herself. She’s not at all giving into the feeling that she’s a toddler lost in a grocery store or wishing that her mother were the kind of person who’d be comforting to call when facing a raging storm of self-doubt—even when they are on speaking terms.

Her stomach turns violently against her when she realizes there’s someone else in the tiny space—someone sitting at the second desk and wearing a truly heinous button-down shirt under a well-fitted blazer.

“Oh, fuck no.”

“Can I help…?” Ben starts to ask before his wonderland eyes lock onto her. “Oh.”

“This is a joke, right?” she asks him. “It’s gotta be. My luck is _not_ this bad.”

She thinks she sees him wince, but he tucks the hurt behind a chilly smile so quickly, she can’t be certain it was ever there.

“Guess I’m harder to dispose of than you thought, huh?”

_Fuck_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Bethany!
> 
> This story is now gonna be four chapters because I always let my writing get away from me. I don't suspect any of you are going to complain, though. About there being more content. You maaay not be super thrilled about the cliffhanger. 😈

“Watch out, Athena. Behind you.”

Devi immediately tenses, her skin attuned to each minute disturbance of air around her as Ben slides past into the narrow copy room to get to the free printer.

“I told you not to call me that,” she says through gritted teeth.

He slaps a document down onto the scanner and hits a couple buttons. “Actually, you told me explicitly to _only_ call you that.”

She rolls her eyes, but otherwise doesn’t respond.

The evening of her first day at Gross, Gray & Berman four days ago, when she’d gone home and googled the firm, intent on reminding herself of all the reasons she’d been so excited to intern there, she had stumbled across the information that her Ben was Ben Gross, the only son of one of the partners. Since then, she’s stuck to her resolution not to mention their night together. The last thing she needs is _that_ getting around the building.

Entertainment lawyers, as it turns out, gossip more than high-schoolers, and she’s not about to prove her mother right by screwing her career up before it’s already begun.

Finished with her copying, Devi settles the hefty stack of warm paper into the box she’d brought along with her to make transportation back to their office easier. She can feel Ben’s eyes on her as she grips the handles and turns for the door.

“You going out for drinks with the rest of the rookies tonight?” he asks before she can leave.

“Not a rookie,” she says, not even pausing in the doorway.

“Right,” he says, following after her. She’d bet all the money in her bank account that he hadn’t actually needed to scan anything, that if she turned back and checked the printer, she’d find a blank sheet of paper. “I forgot. You’re older than time itself and full of eldritch knowledge.”

“And you’re the pathetic idiot that left a bunch of typos in the writeup on the Roberts case.”

She regrets the comment as soon as it bursts out of her. Whether it’s because he understands her resolution to pretend like nothing happened between them and is determined to see her break or because he’s simply this annoying all the freaking time, Ben never fails to light up like a Christmas tree when he gets a rise out of her.

She wants to grind that stupid smile off his face with her knuckles.

“How did this firm ever manage before you, O Great and Powerful One?”

She lengthens her stride, the office in sight.

He doubles his pace, almost jogging to keep up with her, and she allows herself a smirk as she slips inside their tiny closet ahead of him.

“Here,” she says, throwing the report on top of his desk after she sets down the box on her chair. “I took the liberty of marking it up for you.”

He leans against the jamb. “Thoughtful.”

When he doesn’t so much as glance it over, she throws up her hands. “Don’t you care about the quality of your work at all?”

“Not really, no.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Why?”

She blinks at him. “Huh?”

“Why would you find that unbelievable?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

The innocent expression doesn’t fool her for a second. She scowls back at him.

“I’m just saying,” he continues, stepping into the office. That’s all it takes to bring them within a foot of each other. “We don’t know each other, right?”

She jerks up her chin. “That’s right.”

“So, just to be clear, you’re admitting to being _presumptuous_ , correct?”

The word sears her, making her feel like she’s incinerating from the inside out.

Ben notices, if the gleam in his eyes is any indication.

She forces herself to break eye contact and step away from him—which, of course, puts her back up against the wall.

“Just leave it alone, dude, alright?”

“Yeah,” he says, taking a step back and sounding positively cheerful. “Alright.”

She glances up again just in time to see him disappear from the doorway.

A dizzying sensation she’s all too familiar with these days overtakes her. She sits down directly onto her box of copies and curses.

###

“…and then he had the audacity to play trashcan basketball for half an hour!”

“Uh-huh,” Fabiola agrees indifferently.

Devi knows Fabiola’s paying more attention to the risotto she’s preparing for their standing Friday night hangout than Devi’s ranting. And it should probably bother her. Or cow her into shutting up. But Devi needs this. It’s vital to her keeping her cool during office hours. 

“No, Fab, you don’t understand,” she says. “He shouted _nothing but net_ every time he took a shot.”

Fabiola grunts.

“He missed every shot, Fab!”

“Devi—” Fabiola starts to speak when Eleanor comes bustling into the room.

“I know I’m late,” she says, dropping her dance bag in the middle of the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Fabiola says, turning back to her stirring. “Consider yourself lucky.”

Devi scoffs. “Hey!”

“Why?” Eleanor asks, shoving her head into the refrigerator and coming out with the water pitcher and a bottle of white wine. “What’s the what?”

“Well, Devi came here straight from work, so.” Fabiola pauses to sigh. “Three guesses what we were talking about.”

Devi barely gets in her grunt of protest before Eleanor’s saying, “Ah. Ben again.”

“You guys make it sound like talking about him is all I do,” Devi says.

“That is all you do,” Eleanor says, taking glasses down from the cabinet and tucking them into the crook of her arm.

“It is not!”

“Devi,” Eleanor says, pouring a glass of wine and then walking it over to the table so she can slide it to Devi. “I know what that dude’s worn to work every day this week.”

“Because it’s always ridiculous!”

“I mean…” Eleanor walks backward over to the counter, catching her bag with her heel as she does. “I kinda liked the one shirt. You know, with the flowers.”

Devi growls. “That’s because you didn’t have to see it in person.”

“Someone’s gonna trip over that thing,” Fabiola says, frowning at Eleanor.

“I’ll get it in a minute,” Eleanor says, pouring herself a glass of water. She chugs it down before filling a second wine glass and setting it next to the stove.

“Thank you,” Fabiola says grudgingly.

“How was rehearsal?” Devi asks. Because she can and _does_ talk about things other than Ben Gross, thank you very much.

“Invigorating,” Eleanor says, eyes bright. “We spent the last forty minutes trying to nail this pivotal eight counts in _Blow, Gabriel, Blow_. Wanna see?”

Before either Fabiola or Devi can answer, Eleanor’s counting herself in, throwing her arms out in a big arc and clearly preparing to spin. Except she hits the water pitcher and sends it crashing to the ground.

“Dammit, Eleanor,” Fabiola says, switching off the burner and removing her risotto from the flame.

“At least it wasn't the wine,” Devi says, not bothering to move from her seat since Fab’s already laying a dish towel over the bulk of the spill.

“And no one tripped over the bag!” Eleanor says brightly, moving to pick it up before wayward rivlets of water can reach it.

Fabiola lets out a burdened sigh. “I hate you both.”

“That’s cute,” Devi says.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Eleanor says, and then flees from the room, narrowly escaping Fabiola snapping the dish towel in her direction.

###

“Pause it—I have to pee!” Eleanor says, already shoving up off the couch.

“You’ve seen this movie before,” Fabiola says.

Eleanor’s voice carries down the hall. “I said what I said!”

With a sigh, Fabiola stops _Camp Rock_ in the middle of the Final Jam countdown montage.

“I mean, can you really blame her for wanting to experience the magic that is the end of this movie for the millionth time?” Devi says, kicking out her leg so she can nudge Fabiola’s thigh with her toes.

“Yes,” Fabiola says. “I can.”

“You’re grumpy tonight.”

Fabiola pulls the blanket draped over her shoulders tighter. “Just tired.”

Devi raises her eyebrows, about to call bullshit, when Eleanor’s phone lights up on the cushion between them. She does a double-take when her brain fully processes what she totally didn’t mean to read.

“Okay, hit it,” Eleanor says, rushing back into the room.

“Um,” Devi says loudly, forestalling both Fabiola pressing play and Eleanor resuming her seat on the couch. “You still follow Paxton on Instagram?”

“Well, yeah,” Eleanor says, brow furrowed as she plucks the phone out of Devi’s hand and glances at the screen.

“Allow me to rephrase,” Devi says. “ _Why_ do you still follow Paxton on Instagram?”

Eleanor and Fabiola share a loaded look.

“He’s objectively very pretty,” Eleanor says.

“So to be clear,” Devi says, shoving her blanket off her lap and standing. “You’re still following my ex-boyfriend because of thirst?”

“Come on, Devi,” Fabiola says.

“You don’t have to say it like that,” Eleanor adds with a pout.

“No, you guys come on! That’s a weird thing to do!”

“Oh, don’t pretend like you actually care,” Eleanor says.

For one heart-stopping second, Devi thinks _this is it_.

Instead of bringing up the funeral, though, Eleanor asks, “Aren’t you well on your way to some glorious enemies-to-lovers romance, anyway?”

Devi’s brow furrows.

“She’s talking about how you want to sleep with this Ben dude,” Fabiola says, seeing Devi’s confusion.

“No, I haven’t!” she says before Fabiola’s words fully catch up with her. “I mean… What?”

Eleanor’s eyes light up. “You do, you do! You so want to sleep with him!”

Devi closes her eyes, moments from her night with Ben flashing in her mind’s eye like poorly edited porn. “Um.”

“Are we going to finish this movie or what?” Fabiola asks, sounding even grumpier than before.

“We definitely are,” Eleanor says, folding herself back onto the couch.

Devi opens her eyes to find both her best friends staring at her expectantly. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end at their close scrutiny, but she forces a smile. “Yeah, let’s—yeah.”

It’s not until Eleanor leans over to nudge Devi in the side with her elbow and whispers, “Still remember the dance?” that she fully relaxes again, though.

“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to.”

“On my count, then.”

“You guys,” Fabiola says warningly.

“Three…”

“I can hear you, you know,” Fabiola says.

“Two…” Eleanor says, ignoring her. “Now!”

Devi and Eleanor jump to their feet, Devi accidentally whacking Eleanor in the shoulder as she does her air guitar wind-up.

“You’re a danger to yourselves,” Fabiola says, but she’s finally smiling as she holds her phone up to record them.

###

It’s nearly noon on Saturday by the time Devi gets back to her own apartment.

She’d initially chosen it for the fact that it sits halfway between UCLA and Sherman Oaks and, even though it’s now an inconvenience to commute into the city instead of just living there, she finds her fondness for the cozy little studio outweighs her two hours spent in traffic each day.

Somewhere ought to feel like home these days, anyway.

After unlocking the door and kicking her shoes into the room, she tosses her bags onto her desk chair. Then, she strips off her t-shirt and track pants, gathers her hair up into a bun at the top of her head, and moves for the shower.

Her mind goes pleasantly blank as she steps under the hot water, so she stands there, letting time slip off the bridge of her nose, slide between her toes, and trickle down the drain. One of the best parts of living alone is that you can luxuriate in all the hot water you want.

If Devi had a dishwasher—which she absolutely does not but, hey, a girl can dream—she’d run it every night.

The thought makes her smile. That is, until she remembers that all memories of her mother are tainted. Frowning, she reaches for her body wash.

She tries to school her thoughts back toward elevator music territory as she finishes her shower, but the cheerful mood that had been fostered by breakfast with Fabiola and Eleanor—discomfort about Eleanor’s mom’s latest postcard aside—has been thoroughly chased away.

Maybe that’s why the first thing she does after flopping belly-down on her bed still wrapped in her towel is pull up Paxton’s Instagram.

The first several pictures are of him at the gym, and Devi nearly closes out of the app with an eye roll. But something catches her attention just before she does.

Typically, the picture of Paxton snuggled up to a sharp-jawed brunette in what appears to be the booth of a hella nice restaurant features a one-word caption: Zoe.

Devi sits up, staring hard at the picture. She wonders if it’s paranoid to assume that Eleanor’s following her ex to keep track of things like this—to anticipate another full-on Devi breakdown.

She’s halfway through composing a _I saw Paxton’s Insta and I know we’ve never talked about it but I know you know I dumped him, so I’m totally good and you can stop following him just because you’re convinced I’m fragile as fuck_ text before she realizes what a terrible idea it is.

Her throat feels thick the same way it had on Monday night when, after Fabiola and Eleanor had asked about her first day on the job, she’d purposefully omitted the detail that Ben’s more than some random dude getting on her nerves.

Devi throws her phone down and rolls over. She should probably be worried, she muses as she stares up at the ceiling, about how much _not talking_ she’s been doing lately. With her mom. With her friends. With her…whatever Ben is.

Then again, where had sharing ever gotten her? Constantly suspended midway between the life she was supposed to have and total mental breakdown, according to everyone she loves.

###

“Waiting for a call, Athena?”

Devi starts, ripping her eyes away from her phone to find Ben staring at her over their desks. “Huh?”

“You’ve been watching your phone all morning like it’s about to reveal the secrets of the universe to you.” He taps a pen against his open palm. “Or explode. Haven’t decided.”

She forces her attention back to her computer, back to the million and one emails filled with tasks that the lawyers of Gross, Gray & Berman have deemed beneath them and that she needs to get done by the end of the day. Today—the day after her mother’s birthday. For which Devi did not call.

She lets her eyes slip back over to her phone.

“Uh-huh,” Ben says.

“Oh, shut up,” she says, fixing him with an unimpressed glower.

It does nothing to dissuade him. “What bit of knowledge do you covet most, I wonder.”

She raises her eyebrows and, making a snap decision, says, “I thought I knew all the secrets of the universe already.”

He smiles and, honestly, it’s a little sickening, how _genuinely happy_ he looks.

“Stop that,” she tells him.

“Sorry,” Ben says, blinking. “I just—I was starting to think I imagined that you could give as good as you get.”

The comment takes her by surprise, sinking down into the warm pool in her stomach and settling there before she can stop it.

“I—” She starts, and then clears her throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The pen tapping stops. So does the smiling. “Right.”

There’s so much hiding behind that one word that Devi doesn’t know how to parse, it makes her throat burn.

“Why are you even here?” she asks suddenly, leaning into her desk.

He cocks his head and says, “Why is anyone here?”

“You are just so—” She closes her eyes and feels her hands curl into talons over the stacks of reports littering the top of her desk. “Jesus Christ, you’re so annoying.”

“Is it annoying to believe there’s no good or right answer to the question _why are you here_ ,” he says, “or is it smart?”

She opens her eyes. “It’s annoying.”

“Well,” he says, shrugging.

With a huff, she turns back to her computer. Opens a random email.

“I know who your dad is,” she says forcefully after reading the greeting. “ _That’s_ why I was asking.”

“Ah.”

She stares at him expectantly. “Well?”

He widens his eyes at her. “What?”

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and then, sensing that he’s about to be a bastard again, elaborates. “Here, in a closet with a lowly intern, doing grunt work and getting paid—well, more than me, but probably a pittance compared to daddy.”

After a fractional hesitation, he leans across the top of his desk, eyes locked onto hers. “If I answer your question, you have to answer mine.”

Her nostrils flare. “Which is?”

Ben licks his lips. “Do you really want me to stop calling you Athena?”

She can feel her pulse beating between her thighs.

“I…don’t want to answer that.”

He smirks. “Then I guess you’ll have to make up my backstory on your own. Athena.”

“Any tips?” she asks, nearly unable to hear herself over the whooshing in her ears.

He leans back in his seat and starts to tap his pen against his palm again before he says anything. But then, “Never underestimate how little you actually know.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Noted.”

###

“…gonna be in negotiations with Netflix all afternoon.”

“I wonder if he feels stress. Because I would be stressed.”

“No, I think, like, coke probably makes you so stressed, you just lose your ability to feel any. You know?”

“I bet you’re right.”

Devi feels her eyes widen at the two eighth-floor interns’ chosen topic for Monday-afternoon conversation. She’s standing in the break room, waiting for a pot of coffee to finish brewing and trying not to obsessively check her missed-call log.

“Oh, my god, Carley,” the one Devi’s pretty sure is named Shira says as she rinses a mug out in the sink. “Did I tell you who Richmond told me they’re thinking of casting in the new Marvel property?”

“Oh, my god, you and Richmond are trading secrets now?” the other one—Carley—asks.

“I know,” Shira says. “Isn’t it hot?”

“Wait,” Carley says, leaning against the counter behind Devi, who angles herself away from them, trying not to keep listening. But when she pats at where her phone’s tucked into the pocket of her blazer, it’s still not vibrating and she decides it’s not horrible of her to want a distraction. “Weren’t you, like, just seeing a different dude last weekend?”

“So what if I was?” Shira asks, turning off the tap.

“Well, you never told me what happened with him.”

“Carley, I actually have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Wait, what?” Carley accidentally elbows Devi as she pulls out her phone. “Yes, you do. You were looking forward to it because he had a mansion.”

“If I were seeing someone who had a mansion,” Shira says, “I’d still be with them.”

Devi snorts loudly despite herself, and then tosses a worried glance over her shoulder. Shira looks amused when their eyes meet.

Carley keeps talking, unfazed. “Or was it that he was related to a partner. I swear you texted me about it…”

“Oh,” Shira says, dragging her eyes away from Devi and snapping her fingers. “Are you talking about that guy I was going to meet? The Tinder dude?”

“Yes!” Carley says. “That one.”

The coffee maker beeps. Devi pounces on it.

“He suggested we meet in this really gross bar. Do you know it? Corked or something?”

Devi stiffens as she’s setting the carafe back down, and then hears her own voice asking, “Off UCLA’s campus?”

“Yeah,” Shira says, looking totally unbothered to have her butting into the conversation. “I mean, call me high maintenance, but just because we’ve already agreed that we’re both hot doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put a little effort into the seduction, right?”

“Yeah, no, I—” Devi swallows. “I wouldn’t call you high maintenance for that.”

“You’re sweet,” Shira says. “It’s Athena, right?”

Devi presses her lips together, trying not to blush. “Um, no. My name’s Devi.”

“So, weird,” Shira says. “I could have sworn that it wasn’t.”

Devi starts to back out of the room. “Yeah,” she says. “That is hella weird.”

When she gets back to the office, she pauses in the doorway, steaming mug in her hand. Ben’s at his desk typing something, banging too hard at the keys. There’s a mesmerizing quality to how fast his fingers pick their way through sentence after sentence.

And that thought is all it takes for her imagination to run wild with all the ways her novel night with Ben could have belonged to Shira.

Her blouse suddenly feels too stiff, too tight.

She rolls her shoulders back and enters the room.

“You know,” he says, not faltering as he continues to type. “You could give a guy the wrong impression, checking him out that long.”

Devi sets her coffee down with a bit too much force. Some of it sloshes over the edge of the mug as she drops into her seat and pulls herself close to her desk. “You get the wrong impression no matter what I do.”

He snorts.

She logs back into her sleeping computer but then swivels away from the monitor.

“Where do you go to eat lunch?”

That gets him to stop jabbing at his keyboard. “Excuse me?”

“You never stay here,” Devi says, waving her hands at the office. “And I never see you in the breakroom. Or talking to any of the other interns.”

The color rising under the collar of his shirt is at total odds with his smug grin. “Been paying close attention to my movements, have you?”

“If I were paying _close_ attention, I wouldn’t have to ask, okay? So maybe bring the arrogance down a level.”

The grin softens a little. “Fair enough.”

She waits for him to say something else. When he doesn’t, she says, “You’re not going to answer, are you?”

He considers the question before saying, “No, I’m not.”

“Right,” she says. “Because you have way too much fun being an asshole.”

“Nah,” he says, still grinning as he starts typing once again. “Because I like you curious.”

As she tries to refocus for an afternoon of work, she finds herself preoccupied with the possibility that the office is shrinking in around them.

###

“It’s cool,” Devi says around her toothbrush. “I mean, it’s a relief, really.”

“I still think you should call her,” Eleanor says, her voice clearly tense even over the speaker of Devi’s phone.

“No,” Devi says after spitting. “This is the proof I needed. She truly doesn’t care that we’re not talking.”

“I think it’s more like proof that you’re both really stubborn people,” Fabiola says.

And before Devi can do more than whine, Eleanor’s saying, “One day late isn’t even that bad. I bet she wouldn’t even be mad if you called her right now.”

“El,” Devi says, and then pauses to wipe her mouth on her hand towel. “We’re talking about Nalini. She was born mad.”

“Oh, we’re calling her _Nalini_ now?” Fabiola asks as Devi switches off her bathroom light and crawls up onto her bed. “Such is the state of your estrangement?”

“That’s right,” Devi says. “I don’t have a mom. I emerged from my father’s forehead.”

Fabiola’s responding laugh fills the whole apartment. “You’re really trying to paint yourself as the god of reason right now?”

“I am a lawyer,” Devi says. “Reason is my weapon of choice.”

There’s a pause on the other end.

“Ha!” Devi says. “Totally got you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, that was a solid rejoinder.”

“You guys! This isn’t funny!”

Silence follows Eleanor’s outburst. And then Fabiola says, “El…”

“No,” Eleanor says, and then there’s a thump and her voice comes from much further away. “Squander the gift of a nurturing mother all you want, Devi, but I don’t have to sit around and listen to you do it.”

“Wh—” Devi struggles to form words. “Hey!”

“I’m going to, um…” Fabiola says.

Devi stares at the full-length mirror she mounted on her closet door. “Yeah, okay.”

“We’ll talk later?” Fabiola asks.

“Totally,” Devi says. “I’m—it’s fine.”

“She just, you know, the postcard, and—”

“Fab,” Devi says, “I said it’s fine.”

“Okay,” Fabiola says. A second later, the line disconnects.

Devi sighs and then, after a couple more moments of staring at herself in the mirror, pulls back her comforter and crawls into bed. It takes her a few minutes, but she successfully convinces herself that she doesn’t feel like crying.

###

“Hey, girl, hey!”

Devi’s only just tucked her briefcase and purse under her desk the next morning when Adam Shaprio—a low-ranking print media lawyer—pops up in the doorway.

“You have got to stop greeting people like that,” Devi tells him.

“Really?” he asks. “I think it’s fun.”

Devi glares.

Before Shapiro gets too uncomfortable, Ben breezes past him into the office with a mocking, “You go, girl.”

“See?” Shapiro says. “Ben gets it!”

Devi raises her eyebrows at Ben, who shakes his head.

Smirking, Devi turns back to Shaprio. “Was there a reason you came over here?”

“Oh, right!” Shapiro says, pulling a piece of scratch paper out of his pocket. “We’re neck-deep in an intellectual property dispute, and I need you to go down to the records room and pull the files on all these cases for me. Please and thank you.”

He sets the paper down on her desk and pats it.

“Um, sure,” Devi says, scanning the list.

“Before noon would be ideal,” he says, backing through the door.

“Oh, sure,” she says. “You want a block of gold to go with it?”

“I believe in you,” Shapiro says, flashing her a double thumbs up. “The future is female!”

“That doesn’t…” He’s already gone, so Devi trails off with a sigh. “Whatever.”

“Want help?” Ben asks, nodding at the paper.

“I don’t need your help,” she says. “I know where the records room is!”

“Okay, well,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “You can probably understand why I suddenly doubt that.”

She twists up her mouth, wincing at herself. “I can see how you might have been given that impression, yeah.”

Laughter shines in his eyes and he nods at the door. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

“I could ask around and find it, too, you know,” she says, already getting to her feet.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ben says, stuffing his hands into his pockets as she falls into step behind him. He leads her over to the elevator. “You don’t need no man. The future is Athena. I understand.”

“I’ll throttle you,” she says, managing to keep her bubbling laugh in her throat.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ben says, leaning over to whisper conspiratorially, “don’t you know better than to make such a blatant threat in a room full of lawyers? Think of my well-being!”

“ _Your_ well-being?”

He comes to a stop in front of the elevators, jabbing the down button before turning an impish grin on her. “Well, yeah. I’m the one they’ll smother in business cards and offers to call them if I wanna make money filing a harassment suit.”

Devi nods. “Mm, that would be tragic for you.”

He backs into the elevator so he can continue smiling at her, and she gives him a dramatic eye roll before following.

The records room, it turns out, is in the basement of the building, down a sterile white hallway and through a set of heavy double doors.

“It smells down here,” she says, shivering. This is not the place for a skirt.

Ben inhales deeply. “Ah, the stench of moral ambiguity.”

“Uh, I think it’s just mildew, actually.”

He laughs, walking past the rows and rows of filing cabinets toward the far end of the room. “What’s on the list?”

“Here,” she says, handing it over.

He stops at an ancient looking computer, logs into the interface, and then starts searching each case Shapiro requested, marking down their location with a pen he produces seemingly out of nowhere.

Devi leans against the wall next to the mounted computer, watching him.

His focus seems total, which is why she jumps when he suddenly asks, “Have you ever read a romance novel?”

“Excuse me?”

He looks away from the screen and into her eyes as he repeats the question. “Have you ever read a romance novel?”

“Uh,” she says, blinking, “have you?”

“Oh yeah,” he says, jotting something down on the paper. “Not my favorite genre, I grant you, but they can’t all be.”

“Why?”

“Why can you only have one favorite genre?” He gives her a disapproving scowl. “Don’t tell me I have to explain the concept of first place to you, Athena.”

“You’re a dick,” Devi says.

He drops the scowl in favor of a grin. “You meant, why have I read romance novels.”

“Obviously.”

“I guess,” he says, folding the scrap paper in half and running his thumb along the crease, “what it boils down to is curiosity. You make such a big deal about something being only for women, gets a guy curious what secrets you people are trying to hide.”

She narrows her eyes. “The Can’t Have It Makes You Want It More conundrum.”

The look he gives her hangs low and warm in her chest. “Exactly.”

She licks her lips, pushing off the wall as Ben carefully tears the sheet in two.

He holds out one of the halves for her but doesn’t let go when she grabs it.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he explains off her questioning look.

“Wh—oh,” Devi says. “Romance novels.”

“Yes.”

“I mean, yeah, I fuck with that sometimes.”

He laughs, finally letting go. “You fuck with that?”

“What do you want from me, Gross?” she asks, pushing around him and scanning his notations.

“To know if you’re familiar with the romance convention known as pining.”

She stops, eyes glancing around the room. As far as she knows there’s no one else down here, but…

He’s still standing in front of the computer when she turns back to him, his horribly earnest face wide open.

“Dude.”

“No, I know you don’t want to talk about it here,” he says, taking a step toward her.

She raises her eyebrows, not sure whether she’s more annoyed that he’d gotten her intention all along and prodded at her anyway or relieved to have her motivations known without having to speak them.

“It’s just…” Ben says, emotion darkening his cheeks in a way that has Devi leaning toward the latter. “In a romance novel, the protagonist finding out she slept with the boss’s son on accident would be the campy and tragic reason why we have to read upwards of a hundred pages of pining before the couple gives in and chooses love, regardless of the stakes.”

Devi feels her own cheeks warm. “So?”

Ben swallows like he has peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth. “So, I was wondering if that’s anything like…well, like the situation we find ourselves in now?”

“You wanna know,” she says, voice carefully even, “if you can apply romance-novel logic to us, here in the real world? Where a stupid rumor about how I tried sleeping with the boss’s son for clout could literally come up at any and every turn in my whole-ass career? Which, at this point, practically hasn’t even started?”

“Fuck.” He winces, ducking his head to study his own portion of the list. “You’re right, I’m sorry. Forget I—”

“Because the answer,” she says loudly, cutting him off, “is not no.”

He blinks, looking up at her again. “Not no?”

She shakes her head.

“I’ll take it,” he says after a beat.

“Well, you don’t have a choice, so.”

“Terrible syntax.”

She scoffs. “Okay.”

“But I’ll take it.”

She has to look away from his gleaming smile, then, before she makes some equally unflattering face back at him.

###

Devi: _Can you die from inhaling too much mildew? Asking for a friend._

Fab: _We’re your only friends._

Devi: _WOW_

Fab: _Tell me I’m wrong._

Devi: _I mean, I’m not going to. But also, I might be dying and that’s how you’re gonna send me off??_

Devi: _I see how it is._

Fab: _:*_

El: _https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildew_

Devi: _That doesn’t say anything about whether or not it’s toxic if you inhale enough._

El: _Oh well, I didn’t read it._

Devi: _Great. Love you guys, too._

###

“So…lunch.”

Devi looks up to find Ben pushing out of his seat.

She cocks her head. “What about it?”

“Still wanna know where I usually take mine?”

If she’s being honest, Devi doesn’t deserve a lunch break today. She’d spent so much of the morning drafting and rewriting a text she still hasn’t sent to Eleanor. But Ben’s smiling at her all shy and expectant.

“Are you the nerdiest person I know?”

The smile turns exasperated. “I’m assuming that’s a yes?”

She stands. “Uh-huh. Just let me go get my lunch from the break room.”

“Cool,” he says. “I’ll meet you out front.”

“Out front?”

“Uh-huh.”

And with that, he marches out of the room.

Intrigued, Devi does her best to hurry without drawing attention to herself as she gathers her lunch and heads down to the first floor.

Ben pushes up off the building when she emerges from the revolving door. His amused smile seems to say _that was fast_ , but for once he chooses not to tease her, instead simply jerking his head in the same direction he takes a step. “Come on.”

“Uh,” she says, when he leads her around to the alleyway between the firm and the enormous Target next door. “Did you decide to murder me after all?”

“After all?” he asks, turning around but continuing to walk backward. “I was never going to murder you, Athena.”

“How can I be sure of that when you never let me look through your toiletries?”

“I think the fact that you’re still alive is how.”

She harrumphs.

“Besides, how do I know you _didn’t_?” he says, coming to a stop by the loading dock. “You were gone by the time I woke up.”

She mimes zipping her lips shut.

He lets out an amused huff, and then sets down his lunch on the furthest ledge, which is grated and truck-free, before hoisting himself up.

“Wait, this is it?”

He grips the edge once he’s seated, leaning forward a little to look down at her. Devi does not notice the way the muscles in his arms shift under his stupidly pink Oxford shirt. She does not.

“Yeah. What were you expecting?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Dunno exactly. Something that smells less like urine, for sure.”

“We’re in the center of LA,” Ben says. “Everywhere kinda smells like urine.”

“Well, you see, they have these fancy things called restaurants. You can go inside them and eat in sanitary conditions.”

“That was a lot of words you used to admit you’re a coward.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “Jump up here or you’re a coward.”

“I am not a coward!”

“But?”

“I’m wearing heels, dude.”

He shrugs. “Take them off.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He holds out a hand. “Come on, I’ll hoist you up.”

“No way,” she says, staring at his forearm.

“What do you weigh, like, a hundred pounds? I can lift that, easy.”

“Stop talking,” she says, shoving her lunch into his hand. Then, with a little hop, she grabs onto the edge of the dock.

He watches her, reaching out only when her arms wobble, but she shakes her head at him and forces herself to hold on just a second longer before throwing herself up onto the ledge.

“Was that really easier than accepting my help?” he asks, handing her back her lunch.

“Maybe not,” she says, “but it was cooler.”

“As the person who actually witnessed it, not sure I can agree to that.”

She doesn’t answer him, too busy taking in her surroundings from this new vantage point. Even tipping her head back, she can’t see the top of Gross, Gray & Berman.

“Do you think anyone’s watching us?” she asks after a moment.

Ben swallows a bite of his sandwich. “No way.”

“But there are, like, a hundred offices overlooking—”

“No one’s looking,” he says certainly. “Staring down at a warehouse would only remind them that the working class exists, and no one in the building wants that.”

“Wow,” Devi says, coming to a realization a second before voicing it. “You hate it here.”

He turns to blink at her, surprised. “What makes you say that?”

“Um, aside from the fact that you prefer Urine Alley to lunch with your coworkers and, like, a million things you’ve said?”

“Alright,” he says with a humorless little laugh, “yeah. I do. I hate it here.”

She punches him in the arm.

“Ow! What was—fuck, that _hurt_!”

“Good.”

He massages his bicep, frowning at her. “Why would you do that?”

“Because there are, like, hundreds of people who’d kill to have your job. They’d work ten times harder at it, too.”

“Yeah, so?” he asks. “There are, like, hundreds of people I’d trade places with in an instant if I had the chance. That’s not special.”

“Okay, well, that hurts my feelings.”

He bites his lip, regarding her for a moment before saying, “You have feelings? I thought you went through the world all cool, collected, and uncaring.”

She pulls a face. “You know, for someone who’s so obsessed with me, you have learned absolutely nothing about me.”

“Huh,” he says. “Noted. Guess I’ll pay closer attention.”

“I don’t think that’d be good for either of us,” she says, pulling an apple out of her lunch box.

“Fair point.” A beat. Then, “So you could save us both the trouble and just talk to me.”

“I could.” She bites into her apple.

He waits, and when she doesn’t say anything, he says, “But you’re not going to.”

She kicks out her feet, keeps her eyes trained on them as she chews. “Well, I kinda like that you think of me as stoic.”

“You _are_ stoic.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not, though.”

“You are from where I’m sitting.”

“Okay, well, stoic people don’t consider leaving notes for what were supposed to be casual hookups.”

“You considered writing a note?”

She sighs. “Yeah.”

“Well, I wish you had.”

She glances over at him. He’s picking at the crusts of his sandwich.

“My last relationship started as a hookup,” she says after a moment, rotating the apple in her hand before biting into it again.

She turns away from him just as he casts his eyes over at her.

“And you didn’t want history to repeat itself?” he asks.

“Something like that,” she says.

“See?” he says. “That was stoic as hell.”

Devi harrumphs, takes her annoyance out on the apple.

“Alright,” Ben says with a chuckle in his voice. “Maybe stoic isn’t the exact right word. Inscrutable?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “You’re scrutinizing me pretty hard right now, dude.”

“Yeah, but I’m not getting anything out of it.”

She turns, cocking her head at him. “Nothing?”

He licks his lips, eyes falling to her mouth. “Okay, not totally true.”

She grins. A second later, it slips off her face, though. “The last guy…he, uh.” She swallows and starts swinging her legs harder, focusing on the dull throb of her heels smacking against the concrete. “I kinda used him as a distraction.”

“From what?” Ben asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“My dad’s cancer.”

The confession hangs in the space between them, giving Devi time to wonder at it. She’s spent so long avoiding, avoiding, avoiding—the word tastes sharp in her mouth. She gives a watery little laugh.

“So, what I’m getting from you right now,” Ben says after a long moment, “is that you have an aversion to using me. For something more serious than a one-night stand, anyway.”

Devi peers sideways at him. “Seriously?”

He shrugs.

The urge to kiss him sends her pulse spiking and the corners of her mouth curling, and she takes a second to savor the gentle, boyish grin he gives her in return before ducking her head.

“My dad had a heart attack back in April,” Ben says several minutes later, after Devi’s thrown the apple core down at a gathering of starlings. “That’s why I’m here.”

She looks over at him in surprise. 

“You, uh, asked,” he says, frowning at his hands. “Before.”

She feels her brow furrow. “I don’t understand how those two things are related.”

He nods. “My mom asked me to come keep an eye on him, monitor his stress or something. I don’t know. And I told her it was ridiculous because he’s here, what?” He gestures to the building. “Once a week?”

“I honestly wouldn’t know.”

“Exactly,” he says. “But even more to the point, it’s a bad idea because I don’t know anything about entertainment law. I was a philosophy major because I didn’t _want_ to know anything about entertainment law. It’s just, when my mom gets an idea in her—why? Why are you laughing right now?”

“Philosophy!” She shouts the word so loudly, it echoes gleefully through the empty alley. “So much—god.” She has to pause to get her giggles under control. “So much about you makes sense.”

He purses her lips, watching her. Clearly trying to decide if he’s amused.

“Why would you major in a subject so pointless?” she asks, a little breathless with mirth.

“Okay, well, I’d argue that it’s not, actually, but when I first chose it that was kinda the whole appeal.”

His neck and cheeks are bright red, and Devi idly considers pressing her hands to them. They’re cold, so it’d probably feel nice.

“I sense,” she says instead, “sad rich-boy reasoning.”

He sighs gustily and darkens to a nice plum. “I might have spent my adolescence thinking that being a lawyer like my dad would be the key to, I don’t know, eternal happiness or whatever.”

“And then?”

“And then nothing,” he says. “I grew up. I realized how empty it all was.”

“So you turned to _philosophy_?” she asks. “Isn’t the whole discipline empty rhetoric?”

“Look, I’m not saying it was a smart idea or whatever, but I thought it might be, like, poetic justice or something. To make my dad pay for a worthless education of the highest quality. I thought it was gonna be the ultimate _fuck you_.”

“I take it that it wasn’t?”

“Yeah, well, as it turns out, my dad still doesn’t give much of a fuck what I do with my life either way. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has no idea I’m here.”

Devi places a hand on Ben’s thigh, and he cuts his eyes over to her, lips parted.

“My dude,” she says, “that is some _serious_ sad rich boy stuff.”

He knocks his shoulder into hers but doesn’t protest. A moment later, he says, “I’m sorry to hear about your dad.”

“Yeah.”

They eat the rest of their lunch in companionable quiet.

Every couple seconds, her eyes drift over to him. Of course, the fact that he’s pretty is a big part of why she’s in this weird scenario to begin with. But she feels some headier attraction subsuming her chest as she sneaks glances at him. Something with all the gravitational pull of the sun.

“We should head back in,” he says after a while, shaking her out of her reverie.

She nods. “There are always more emails to answer.”

“I am Sisyphus,” he says, dropping down to the concrete below. “The inbox: my hill. Clearing out emails: my boulder.”

She snorts, and then shifts her ass onto the edge of the dock before hesitating.

“Are you gonna be difficult again or will you let me help you?” he asks, noticing.

“I wasn’t being difficult,” she says, but then, because she is actually worried about what it’d do to her ankles to land in these heels, she adds, “But I will take the help.”

He nods, stepping forward and grabbing onto her thighs. “Slide down. I got you.”

His hands are warm and looking down at him like this is like peering into her memory of their night together.

With a shaky little laugh, she pushes herself off the ledge.

He catches her with quick arms wrapped securely around her thighs, staggering back a couple steps to keep his balance, and she grips his shoulders tight, allowing him to set her delicately back on the ground.

And then they’re facing off, practically no space between them.

“More or less satisfying than doing it yourself?” he asks, voice so low she can barely hear the question, and then reaches out to smooth the wispy strands of hair that escape her bun throughout the day off her forehead.

“Maybe they’re satisfying for different reasons,” she says, eyes on his lips.

She takes a moment to appreciate his responding groan before stepping out of the airless bubble between them.

Ben whistles one low, drawn-out note as she turns and struts back for the building.

###

“Twitterpated,” Ben says when Devi glances over at his desk for the millionth time that afternoon to find him already smiling at her.

Her fingers still over her keyboard. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“I was trying to think of the exact right word to describe how I feel right now,” he says. “And that’s it.”

She blinks at him. “ _Twitterpated_ is the word?”

“Yup.”

“Are you a cartoon rabbit?”

“So what if I am?” he asks, totally unfazed by her lack of cooperation. “Is that a deal breaker for you?”

“Uh, I think that’d be a deal breaker for anyone.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’ve never had a crush on a cartoon animal before?”

Her eyes widen. “I am learning so much about you today, Gross.”

“Alright, well, you didn’t say no.”

“Which one was it?” she asks.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

She considers that for a second. “On the count of three?”

He nods. “One.”

“Two.”

“Scamp,” she says.

At the same time, Ben says, “Mrs. Brisby.”

Devi raises her eyebrows. “Who?”

“Mrs. Brisby?” He repeats. “The daring and overburdened hero of the classic animated film _The Secret of NIMH_? Nothing?”

Devi shakes her head. “Sorry, no.”

“That is unacceptable, Athena. We are watching that movie, okay?”

“So I can watch you lust after your childhood crush? I don’t think so.”

“In normal circumstances, I would poke fun at you for being jealous of a cartoon mouse, but you’re right to feel threatened. Mrs. Brisby is everything.”

“I’ve barely even decided if I like you,” she says, crossing her arms. “So I don’t think feeling threatened is an issue.”

He smirks at her and holds out his hand, palm up. “Oh, it will be.”

“What does that even mean?”

He waggles his fingers. “Give me your phone. I’m programming my number, and we’re making this movie night happen.”

She stares at him for a moment and, just before his grin starts to slip, hands over her phone.

###

Devi’s just finished locking her mailbox when her phone buzzes with a text. She smiles when she sees the name _Ben Gross_ attached to it.

_Don’t think I didn’t notice your cartoon crush, you rogue-lover, you._

She grins as she enters the stairwell, tucking her phone in her pocket and shuffling through her mail. She freezes halfway up the flight, though, because between the flier for a pizza place opening up the street and an ad from an insurance company is a plain white envelope. She’d recognize that handwriting anywhere.

Nalini.

Devi’s brain jumps frantically from possibility to possibility—it’s a temple newsletter, no it’s a coupon book, no it’s a letter from the cousins back in India, no it’s a letter from _her_ —but she can’t open it. Not here.

Heart beating hard, Devi continues up the stairs.

_Breathe_ , she tells herself. _Breathe, breathe, just keep fucking breathing_.

When her door is locked, she falls against it and pulls the envelope back out. She feels a stab of homesickness, seeing the return address.

Tears already gathering in her eyes— _please be a letter, please be an apology letter_ —Devi rips it open.

There’s a second envelope inside, from UCLA.

She blinks, and then reads.

And then she punches a hole in the wall.

###

Forty minutes later, Fabiola’s at her door, a paper bag full of tacos in her hand.

“Eleanor had to go to rehearsal—you know, tech week’s right around the corner and everything. Otherwise she totally would have been here.”

“Uh-huh,” Devi says, stepping back to let Fabiola in and pretending not to notice the face she pulls when she sees the damage. “It’s cool, you don’t have to pretend for me. I know she’s pissed.”

“I think hurt is probably more—”

“But you know what?” Devi says, getting a couple plates down from the shelving unit that serves as her kitchen, pantry, and cupboard. “I’m pissed, too, and way better at holding out for apologies.”

“I mean, I think she knows that it was unfair of her to put her own issues on you,” Fabiola says, setting the tacos on the desk, “but I also think you—”

“Good, so we’re on the same page,” Devi says. “El definitely owes me the apology.”

Fabiola clips and unclips her watch. “You know, you seem kinda chipper for someone who just punched through a wall.”

“That?” Devi asks, handing over one of the plates before bouncing up onto her bed. “I’m totally over that.”

Fabiola sits down heavily in the desk chair. “Um, what?”

“Yeah, it’s like, whatever. Nalini’s disowning me. I already knew she wanted to, so it’s not like this is news or anything.”

“Devi, what happened,” Fabiola asks, passing her a foil-wrapped taco.

“There,” Devi says, pointing at the letter sitting on her desk.

Fabiola’s quiet for several minutes, carefully absorbing the past-due notice from UCLA and the post-it Nalini stuck to the envelope it came in.

“She’s not paying for your school anymore,” she says finally, after setting down the letter.

“And why would she,” Devi says, keeping her eyes trained on her plate. “I’m a huge disappointment, after all.”

Devi’s manic laugh gets lodged in her throat.

“Devi…”

“No, it’s fine,” Devi says, scrambling to her feet on impulse. _Space_ , she thinks as she bounces lightly on the mattress. _Need space_. “I’m totally fine.”

There’s a pregnant silence during which Devi cannot bring herself to look over at Fabiola. So she raises her plate up under her chin, takes another bite of her taco.

“Looks like the letter came back in May,” Fabiola says.

Devi looks up to see Fabiola focused intently on the bill from UCLA.

“So?” she asks.

“So,” Fabiola says, shrugging. “It took you mom kind of a while to decide this. I mean, probably. I don’t know.”

“So?” Devi repeats, stepping off her bed to pull another taco out of the bag.

“That’s…hopeful?”

Devi stares forbiddingly at her friend. “How do you figure?”

“Maybe if you called her to—”

“I don’t want to talk to her,” Devi says. “Not ever again. What don’t you and El get about that?”

Fabiola purses her lips, looking unhappy, but nods. “So what are you gonna do?”

“Get a second job, I guess? I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Devi says, shoving the envelope into a random notebook and out of sight.

“Okay,” Fabiola says. “What _do_ you want to talk about?” And then, under her breath, adds, “Please don’t say Ben.”

“Okay, I don’t talk about him that much,” Devi says, crossing her arms.

“Sure,” Fabiola says. “Whatever.”

Devi glares at her friend. “You might as well just say what you’re thinking right now because I’m not in the mood to tip-toe around pouty Fab all night.”

Fabiola scoffs. “Like you’d actually listen if I did.”

“See? That,” Devi says. “I can’t do anything with your passive aggression.”

“Right.” Fabiola stands. “You’re much better with aggressive aggression.”

A disbelieving laugh escapes Devi. “Holy crap, are you mad enough to physically fight me right now?” She throws up her hands. “Bring it on.”

“No, I don’t want to fight you!” Fabiola shouts, stepping backwards. “What is going _on_ with you, Devi?”

“You’re supposed to tell me,” Devi says, slapping her palm with the back of her other hand. “Aren’t you listening?”

“You wanna know what I think is going on with you?” Fabiola says, and then licks her lips. “Fine! You think you can use this fight with your mom as an excuse not to deal with your dad’s death!”

“No,” Devi says, her voice quiveringly insistent. “What’s happening is I’m mourning the loss of my entire family, actually.”

Fabiola shakes her head. “Mourning your _entire_ family? Devi, it’s not gone. You’re actively destroying what’s left.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your mom, El…me. You’re picking fights with everyone who loves you.”

“I did _not_ pick the fight with Nalini. Or Eleanor, for that matter!”

“Maybe not,” Fabiola says. “But it sure seems like you’re prepared to do everything in your power to keep them going.”

“Oh, so wanting an apology isn’t allowed anymore? Sorry I didn’t get that memo!”

“And after you’ve finished fucking up your personal life,” Fabiola says, clenching her fists tight—like she’s holding her nerve there, steady. “You’re gonna go and ruin your career.”

“What the fuck does _that_ mean?”

“Oh, come on, Devi,” Fabiola says.

“What?” Devi bites out the question. “I sincerely have no fucking clue how my career has anything to do with anything!”

“Fine,” Fabiola says. “Just don’t come crying to me when you start hooking up with Ben and things go horribly wrong.”

The words are so unexpected, it takes Devi an unreasonably long time to process them. And when she does, she freezes. “Wh-what?”

“It’s obvious you like him.” Fabiola’s sharp tone brooks no argument.

Devi juts out her chin. “How does that make things going horribly wrong a foregone conclusion, exactly?”

Fabiola sighs. “You said he’s a partner’s son, so anything you start with him already has potential complications. And you know what happened to your last relationship when things got complicated. The state you’re in…”

“You should leave now,” Devi says, her nostrils flaring.

After a tense beat, Fabiola nods. “I really should.”

She’s at the door in one long stride, slamming it behind her as she goes. Flakes of plaster from the gaping hole in the wall flutter to the ground.

###

Since Devi’s brain had filled with a white-hot, searing _nothing_ following Fabiola’s departure, it’s hard to say for sure when her decision to drive to Ben’s had truly formulated. She only knows she’s really hoping to fight back against her twisty, thorny non-thoughts with a different kind of white-hot sear.

“Athena?” Ben asks, answering her knock with a bewildered expression. And wearing only a t-shirt and boxers. “What’s going on? You know you’re supposed to text a person back before plans are—”

“Shut up,” she says, surging into the room and kicking the door shut behind her before she grabs him by the shoulders and thrusts him, hard, up against it.

“Holy shit,” Ben says, his voice tight in a way she recognizes. In a way that makes her want to purr like a bobcat.

“I told you to shut up,” she says. And then she kisses him like, together, they can rewrite the story of how she came to be here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Bethany, for knowing exactly how to fix the awkward sentences that I can't, for the life of me, fix myself.
> 
> Many people - to my heartfelt gratitude - mentioned enjoying the way Devi's relationship with the women in her life drives this story. So, good news: there is a lot of the trio in this chapter! I hope you enjoy!

“Not that this isn’t, um—” Ben pauses, licking his lips as Devi trails wet, open-mouth kisses up his neck. Then he titters nervously. “I already know you’re gonna make fun of my word choice—”

“Then quit while you’re ahead,” she says, and then drops to her knees.

“— _titillating_ ,” he continues, his voice cracking over the word, “but, um, I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Devi slides her hands under the boxers, scraping her nails up his thighs. “I’m about to take your entire dick in my mouth, Gross. Just be grateful.”

“I mean, I am,” he says, and then his hands cover hers, holding her in place. “I definitely am.”

She shakes her head at him. “Yeah, I don’t need reassurance from this angle, dude.”

“Devi,” Ben says, tugging her hands out of his underwear and pulling her up to her feet.

She’s so stunned by the use of her name that she puts up no resistance.

“What’s going on? Talk to me.”

She feels frozen for a second longer before irritation sets in. “Why does something have to be going on?”

“I don’t know,” he says, raising his eyebrows and grazing his fingers along the bandage wrapped around her knuckles. “Maybe the fact that something obviously is?”

She snatches her hand out from under his touch. “Well—just stop, okay? Stop pretending like you know me when you don’t know anything about me.” 

Ben swallows, staring at her. “Well, that’s by design, right?”

“Huh?” she asks, starting to feel dizzy. Like this conversation is swirling out of control around her, and she’s trapped inside it.

“I’m sure you’re right, that I don’t know that much about you—not all the big stuff, anyway. But that’s on purpose.” Ben’s speaking slowly, like he knows she’s stuck in the eye of a storm. “You’re guarding it, waiting for the right moment to share.”

She stumbles a step backward. “You…” And, unable to come up with adequate words with this feeling swelling and swelling and swelling in her chest, she finishes, “…really like me.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Uh, yeah. I thought we’d made that pretty explicit. Remember the whole romance-novel bit?”

She blinks. And then tears pool in her eyes and, before she can reinforce the barriers she’d thought she’d been doing such a good job maintaining, the storm whirls away from her altogether and she’s crying so hard she can feel each sob beat like hurricane winds at her emotional shutters.

“I—what?” Ben says. “Okay. No, this is fine. I was totally prepared for that response.”

Devi hiccups and presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, a futile attempt to staunch the free-flowing tears.

“Would it be weird if I google what you’re supposed to do when someone is…fuck. Come—I’m going to touch you now if—come on.”

He guides her over to the couch with a tentative hand between her shoulder blades, and then grips her shoulders to rotate her until she feels soft leather against her calves.

She can tell he’s about to pull away as she sinks down, so she grabs onto his forearms, stopping him. Tugging him down beside her. And when the cushions shift as he lands, she blindly tucks her face into his neck.

She’s pretty sure he lets out a soft _oh_ before slipping his hand under the backs of her knees and hauling her legs up onto his lap, and something in her chest permanently loosens and crumbles away. She gives herself over completely to the grief.

Eventually, when her active crying gives way to damp, hiccupy breathing, Ben says, “I looked him up. Your dad.”

Devi blinks, doesn’t say anything.

“Physics professor. Season ticket holder for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Lover of tennis.”

She lifts her face off Ben’s shoulder to frown at him. “Are you quoting the obituary?”

“No!”

She stares at him a moment longer before laughter bursts past her lips. “Next time, definitely google what to do when someone completely loses it. You are _not_ equipped to handle things alone.”

Slowly, his eyes wander her face, a soft smile forming on his lips as he completes his circuit. That’s when she notices that his arm is slung fully around her back, his fingers idly toying with the hem of her shirt at her hip.

“You’re laughing,” he says, “so I can’t have done _that_ badly.”

Calling attention to them deflates all the remaining giggles in her throat. Still, she hums her acknowledgement.

Wordlessly, Ben grabs a tissue box off the nearby end table and hands it to her.

She accepts it, cradling it against her chest as she tries to swab the worst of the mess off her face. After a moment, though, she’s forced to concede defeat. She slides her legs off his lap, standing and heading for the bathroom with a, “Be right back.”

Pointedly avoiding her reflection, Devi turns on the tap and splashes her face with cold water. Then she uses toilet paper to blow her nose until it’s raw before rubbing more cold water over her flushed and agitated skin.

And then she pauses there, hand on the doorknob, waiting for the shame to catch up with her. All she feels, though, is drained.

With a sigh, she walks back out into the living room.

“I should probably leave,” she says, leaning over the back of the couch to look down at Ben.

He turns with a start, and then frowns.

She frowns back, trying to read the look in his eye. “What?”

“You were totally about to use me.”

“Oh,” Devi says, ducking her head. “That.”

Ben stands. “Were you even gonna talk to me at work afterward?”

“I-I don’t know the answer to that,” she says miserably.

He’s silent for so long, it compels her to look up. He looks mad. And a little heartbroken. And maybe even a little…amused?

“You know, when you did it the first time—the completely ignoring me—my worry was that the sex had been way worse for you than it had been for me. Nice to have it confirmed that’s not the case. Because, I mean—” He starts to pace. “If ruining our friendship was worth a second go…or is that not as good as I think it is either?” He comes to a stop, eyes boring into hers.

Devi buries her face in her hands. “No, it’s exactly as good as you think it is. Probably better.”

“…Probably?”

She drops her hands, encouraged by the hope in his voice. “Way better. Definitely way better.”

“Then why did you come here tonight, Devi?”

Fabiola’s accusation echoes through her head: _You’re picking fights with everyone who loves you._

“I don’t think I have a good answer for that question, either,” she says. “Except to say that I’m, like. Just totally messed up.”

“Because of your dad?”

“There are some days I wish that was the whole reason,” she says, pushing back from the couch. “Which is probably more evidence that…the truth is, it’s deeper than that. How messed up I am.”

“Okay, well, that’s bullshit.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“Thinking there’s something fundamentally wrong with you,” Ben says, enunciating, “is bullshit.”

She stands there, too stunned to say anything.

“It’s an excuse,” he continues, “to not take responsibility for yourself.”

Devi scoffs. “Oh, believe me, I know I’m shitty. That’s part of the problem.”

“No,” Ben says, and there’s so much vehemence in his voice that Devi staggers a step back. “I can’t believe you think you can say that.”

“Well, what do you want me to say?” She squeaks the question at him. “Tell me how to make any of it okay.”

He crosses the room then, a manic glint in his eye. “I want you to say you understand that in this uncaring universe we’re trapped in, the only thing that gives you power is the ability to control _you_.”

“I don’t—” She jerks her head once, trying to dislodge the stent of exhaustion that’s keeping Ben’s words from making sense. “What does that even mean?”

“Stop believing that something inherent to your being is making you behave the way you do. You! Of all people!” He shakes his head, exasperated. “Bullshit.”

Devi stares at him.

Whether he intuits that she needs him to keep talking or that he simply can’t sit with lengthy silences, he continues. “You’re the most stubborn person I know—almost-know, whatever you want to call it—and I can’t believe you’d just give up like that.”

A flare of anger lights her up from the inside. “Uh, I’m not _giving up_ anything,” she says, nostrils flaring. “Okay? I’m trying to deal with what’s been taken from me, actually.”

“Exactly!” Ben says, gripping her shoulders tight.

Her hands fall slack at her sides as he shakes her a little. “What—?”

“Look, I’m not gonna pretend to understand exactly what you’re going through,” he says.“I’ve never lost anyone that important to me—a cat, once, but that’s—”

“Not even remotely the same thing?” Devi supplies.

“Right, yes,” he says, earnest despite her sarcasm. “But there’s a reason grief is one the most written-about emotions. It’s Romantic, with a capital R—too big for any one person to make sense of.”

“You’re being super intense right now, dude.”

“Devi, it’s just a feeling. Or a process. Or whatever. But it doesn’t run your life. _You_ do.”

“I…” She trails off, finding it harder and harder to have Ben in her face and watching her with deepening wells of concern in his eyes, harder and harder to ignore the impact of his words. She lets her swollen eyelids droop closed.

One of his hands leaves her shoulder to cup her cheek. She leans into the touch.

After a moment, she says, “I like to think I would have. Talked to you, that is. At work.”

He seems to understand it for the apology it is and moves his other hand to her face.

“It would have been uncomfortable as hell, but…”

“But you would have suffered through it,” Ben says, “because you’re the stubbornest person I know.”

She opens her eyes to a blinding smile. “Okay, that’s not the compliment you seem to think it is.”

He shrugs, and then sways into her to paint the gentlest suggestion of a kiss across her lips.

“What was that for?” she asks.

“A reminder,” he says. “That I’m the captain of my own fate.”

She shakes her head, and the tip of her nose brushes his. “God, you’re a nerd.”

“You like it.”

She doesn’t argue.

###

Later that night, as Devi stares into the darkness of her apartment wishing for sleep, her brain offers her only snippets of her fight with Fabiola, played over and over and over again until the words start to lose meaning.

With a groan, she rolls over, grabs her phone. Opens her group text with Eleanor and Fab…and almost immediately backs out.

After a second of consideration, she opens the text Ben had sent her—god, was that really less than twenty-four hours ago?

Biting her lip, she types. _You called me Devi tonight. Kind of a lot, actually._

She stares at her phone for a couple long seconds before letting it fall on her chest. It’s not like she was actually expecting him to be awake.

Her brain’s just about to settle back in for another round of _you’re actively destroying what’s left_ when her phone buzzes. She fumbles with it in her haste to pick it back up.

 _I know_ , the text says. And another one arrives on its tail. _I was waiting for the right moment, and I pretty much nailed it, huh?_

She snorts. _You’re pretty much desperate for validation, huh?_

Bubbles pop up immediately. _You’re pretty much allergic to providing it._

_Yes._

He sends back a truly obnoxious string of laughing emojis.

She frowns at the screen and then carefully types out: _We’re good, right?_

 _That depends_ , he texts back. _Are you done ceding your power to an uncaring universe?_

Even as she rolls her eyes, Devi considers the question. After several minutes, she types back: _I totally want to be._

She falls asleep waiting for his reply, but smiles when she sees there are messages waiting for her in the morning.

_Then we’re good._

_Goodnight, Devi._

Before throwing off the covers and starting her morning routine, she texts back.

_Good morning, Ben._

###

“Hello to you on this totally normal morning,” Ben says, when he breezes into their shared office later that morning.

“Super chill,” Devi says, barely looking up from her slew of morning emails.

“Well, that is my middle name.”

She frowns. “Your full name is Ben Super Chill Gross?”

“Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?”

She stops typing to glare playfully at him. “You know, you’re really making this whole continuing-to-talk-to-you thing hard on me.”

“Uh-uh-uh,” he says, waggling his finger at her. “I believe we’re past those comforting lies you’ve been telling yourself about how little you like me.”

“Nuh-uh,” Devi says. “They’re, like, my favorite part of our friendship.”

“Athena, you full-on wept in my arms last night.”

Her face burns, but she cocks an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “I knew you weren’t gonna last five minutes before bringing that up.”

“Because our friendship is stronger than you ever wanted it to be. Such is the power of my magnetism.”

“Are you going to be this insufferable all day?”

He shrugs. “Maybe.”

“What’s the company policy on murdering annoying office mates?”

He frowns thoughtfully. “Pretty sure I read in the employee handbook that it’s frowned upon.”

Devi snaps her fingers. “Damn. Guess I’m stuck with you, then.”

He claps a hand to his chest. “God, for you that was, like, a declaration of love. I’m a little embarrassed for you right now.”

“Oh, my god,” she says, flushing hotter.

He doesn’t goad her further, but she does feel his knowing eyes on her as certainly as if he were cupping her face in his hands.

###

“Athena… _psst_. Athena!”

“ _Dude_ ,” Devi says, stuffing a letter about the firm’s employee appreciation barbecue into an envelope and then slapping it down in one of the _finished_ piles. “What do you want? I only just worked back up to my pre-lunch motivation.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing, but my favorite part of the day is the post-lunch lull.”

“That’s because you hate everything about this job,” she says, folding another letter into thirds.

He watches her over his own mound of envelopes. “Not _everything_.”

She tries to hide her smile, but her mouth refuses to cooperate. “Fine, you’ve officially distracted me. What did you want?”

“To know what your favorite story is.”

She stares at him for a second. “ _That’s_ what you interrupted me for?”

“Well, yeah.”

She heaves a sigh. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“Honestly, neither do I,” he says, impish grin causing his cheek to dimple.

Devi stuffs another envelope before saying. “I don’t have an answer.”

Ben scoffs. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Oh, so if I were to ask you, totally out of the blue, what your favorite story was—not even narrowing down the medium—you’d have an answer on the tip of your tongue?”

“Always,” he says, folding his hands over his stack of letters. “Not a minute goes by where I’m not thinking about stories. Especially stories about the power of friendship.”

Devi feels her stomach lurch. “Are you fucking with me right now, dude?”

He holds up a finger. “Hasn’t seen _The Secret of NIMH_.” Then another. “Reacts violently to spur-of-the-moment discussions of fiction.” He shakes his head mournfully. “I’m starting to think this best friendship is doomed.”

She cocks her head at him. “Okay, you’re cute and all, but you are _not_ my best friend.”

His cheeks flush. “Well, that arch emphasis was hurtful, but…I—It’s Shapiro, isn’t it? I always suspected.”

She gasps, grabbing the letter off the top of her pile, crushing it into a ball, and lobbing it at Ben’s face. “That is not even funny.”

He flinches, and it glances off his ear. “You just deprived a Gross, Gray & Berman employee from the opportunity to revel in how appreciated they are.”

“So, someone gets an empty envelope. Boo-hoo.”

“Remorseless, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Hot.”

A surprised laugh pops out of Devi. “Shut up, Gross.”

He pouts.

“I’ve actually known my best friends since I was a kid,” Devi says after several minutes.

Ben raises his eyebrows at her. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. We went to the same grade school.”

“And you’ve been friends with them ever since?” he asks, a sadness she doesn’t really understand lurking behind the question.

“I mean, we went to different colleges, so we haven’t always been super close, but when Fabiola accepted a job at Honeybee around the same time I moved back to help take care of my dad…and Eleanor was already here, getting her MFA… It kinda felt like we were fated to be together again.” Devi laughs, and she’s embarrassed to find it sounds wet and pitiful. “Stupid.”

“Hey,” Ben says, “what’s wrong?”

“They hate me,” she says, unable to look at him.

“All of a sudden? After a quarter-century of friendship?”

She swipes angrily at her tears. “Not all of a sudden. It’s—it’s complicated.”

“Why?”

Devi considers the question. “Mostly? Because we all have very strong opinions about what’s best for me.”

Ben grunts.

“What?”

“That just sounds nice, is all.”

“It’s annoying,” she says, and then, thinking about how close she came to punching Fabiola, adds, “and honestly kinda perilous.”

He laughs softly. “ _Perilous_.”

“Shut up.”

“No,” he says, “I liked it.”

“Of course you did.”

He laughs again, accepting this, and then says, “That’s kinda the trade-off in every relationship, though, right? Perils.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, frowning down at her hands.

“Well, there’s always the chance someone will look at you and decide they hate what they see. So. Being vulnerable is fucking terrifying.”

Devi stops folding to stare hard across the room at Ben.

“What?” he asks after a second, noticing her scrutiny.

“You put everything out there, like, all the time.”

“Well, I don’t know about that…”

“Bro, you are the most open book I’ve ever known. It’s kind of obnoxious.”

Ben frowns. “Do you have a point?”

“I just…I never would have guessed,” she says. “That you’re scared.”

He takes a moment to absorb that, his frown softening into a pleased grin. “Beats the alternative, right?”

“Which is?”

“We talked about this,” he says, smug. “Allowing yourself to be a powerless object in the uncaring universe and all that.”

Devi shakes her head. “Philosophy majors.”

He purses his lips, amused.

After a moment, they both return to work. Devi finds her mind wandering as she stuffs envelopes, though, over the well-worn memory of her fight with Fab…but unlike last night, other memories lurk close behind. Of the week in high school when Eleanor’s mom breezed into the picture and then back out again. Of the summer before she and Fab left for school. Birthdays and group assignments and holiday breaks hanging out like no time at all had passed since they were first graders who became friends because they coveted the sticker set Eleanor used to decorate her colored pencil case.

“Hey,” Devi says, and Ben looks up eagerly. “Can I use your oven tonight?”

He cocks his head. “Uh—”

“It’s for the power of friendship,” she says, barely suppressing her eye roll.

The line works. Ben lights up, delighted. “When you put it like that…”

“Is that a yes?” she asks impatiently.

“Yeah,” Ben says. And then, a beat later, “What are we making?”

###

“Get out of here,” Devi says, dropping the whisk to shove Ben’s hand away from the bowl of icing. “That’s so unsanitary.”

“You’ve been talking this icing up for _hours_ ,” he says, whining. “I just wanna try it!”

“It’s not good on its own,” she says, hip-checking him back from the counter.

“I see.” He takes a reluctant step back, holding up his hands in surrender. “It’s not like I selflessly lent my kitchen to this culinary disaster or anything. I don’t deserve to see what my sacrifice has been for.”

“I dare you to call my cinnamon loaf a disaster after you’ve tasted it,” she says.

“If I ever get to.”

“There are, like, two minutes left on the timer, dipshit. Chill.”

He huffs.

Grinning, Devi pointedly swipes her finger along the side of the bowl and sticks it in her mouth, moaning.

Ben’s lips part, eyes widening. After clearing his throat, he says, “Undignified.”

She shrugs the comment off. “I never claimed to have dignity.”

He’s staring at her mouth so intently, she’s not sure he even hears her.

“Ben?”

“Hmm?”

She can feel her pulse beating hard in her temples, in her wrists. “What are you thinking about?”

He pulls his eyes up from her lips, and his blown-wide pupils are all the answer she needs.

The timer beeps, making them both jump.

“Fuck me,” Devi says, whirling around and tugging on an oven mitt.

A fog of warm cinnamon smacks her in the face when she opens the door and, with it, a powerful wave of nostalgia. As she tugs the pans out, her head, which had been buzzing with anticipation just seconds ago, seems to fill with white noise instead—the aftereffects of a bomb of memories going off.

She can feel Ben’s eyes on her as she finagles the loaves out of their pans and onto a cooling rack, but she’s not sure exactly when he intuits the shift. Before she knows it, though, his hand is covering one of hers.

“Devi?” he asks gently. “Are you—?”

She pulls out from under his warm palm. “It’s fine. It’s just…my dad loved to bake, especially around Christmas, and I—” She covers her face and takes a few deep breaths. “Dammit.”

“Is this his recipe?” Ben asks. Like he’s not sure he’s allowed to.

Devi swallows down her tears, drops her hands, and shakes her head. “He was more of a cookie guy.”

Ben fishes a butter knife out of a drawer and hands it to her. “Tell me something else about him,” he says, in that same uncertain voice.

Devi’s heart squeezes. “ What do you want to know?”

“Anything you want to share.”

She’s quiet for a moment, turning back toward the oven and drizzling icing over each loaf, really concentrating on distributing it evenly. Then, she says, “We’re coming up on a year since his diagnosis.”

Ben takes a second to absorb that. “Wow. It all happened pretty fast, then.”

“So fucking fast,” she agrees, watching the stream of icing get thinner and thinner.

“When…?”

“June twenty-ninth.”

He acknowledges the information by tucking a strand of hair that’s fallen out of her messy bun behind her ear.

She takes a second to lean into the touch before using the butter knife to smooth out the icing.

After a while, when she no longer feels as though her brain’s choking on bomb smog, she says, “You’re a good listener.”

“Well, you don’t say all that much.” His tone is deliberately light, teasing.

She sets down her knife and turns to look him in the eye. “You’re good at listening even when I’m not talking.”

He licks his lips, eyes darting back and forth between hers. Finally, he nods. “I like you.”

“I’m not very good at this,” she says firmly, urgently. Because he ought to know.

“This?”

“Interpersonal relationships,” she clarifies.

He tries to hold back a smile. “I’d kinda already gotten that, yeah.”

“No, you don’t get it,” she says. “I’m, like, really bad.”

“Athena—”

“I broke up with my last boyfriend at my dad’s memorial service,” she blurts, cutting off whatever too-nice thing he’d been about to say.

The smile slips off his face. “Wh—Okay. Why?”

“Why?” she repeats.

“Yeah.”

“I—” As she slices up one of the loaves, Devi thinks back on that day, trying to remember what it had been like to live through it. Her memories are all blurred with exhaustion and panic. “I didn’t want him there.”

“Bit of an intense way to communicate that, but hey.” He shrugs.

“Really? That’s all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say?” he asks. “That you’ve successfully scared me away?”

“If you were smart” she says, dropping his piece of cinnamon loaf onto a plate and shoving it at him, “you would be”

“Devi, I _like_ _you_.”

“I’m impulsive.”

“I know.”

“And kinda mean.”

“Kinda?”

“And I’m not very good at communicating my feelings.”

“I’m a sad loser who keeps fictional characters as company,” he counters.

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, you’re trying to scare me off now?”

“Just want you to make as much of an informed decision as you want me to.”

“Dude, I saw your _Rick and Morty_ shower curtain, and I still want to hang out with you so. I think it’s safe to say I’m cool overlooking your flaws.”

“That,” Ben says, “is the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“And that’s the meanest.”

She offers him a limp smile. Then says, “I like you back, you know.”

He tries to shrug it off, all nonchalant and unaffected, but his cheeks are bright pink. “I was maybe starting to suspect.”

She nods. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“See, that I did know.”

“Oh, really?”

“Uh-huh.”

She does it, right then, before he can gloat about having the last word.

A moment later, though, when she’s in danger of getting swept away by the kiss, she shoves him back. “Are you gonna try my culinary genius, or what?”

He raises his eyebrows, lips smudged and eyes dazed. “I mean, I was enjoying a different kind of treat, but sure.”

“Dude,” she says, shaking her head and nudging a plate closer to him. “Weak.”

“As weak as I make you,” he says, breaking off a slice and popping a bit in his mouth. “In the knees.”

“Gross,” she says, laughing reluctantly.

“This is really good,” he says, picking the plate up off the counter.

“Worth the wait?”

He takes the question more seriously than she’d intended, his eyes searching her face intently. Finally, he says, “It absolutely is…was.”

“Subtle.”

He grins.

###

Devi circles the Melnitz Hall parking lot in search of Eleanor’s car. When she finally spots it, she feels adrenaline shoot through her body.

“You’ve got this,” she tells herself, pulling into an empty space a few cars down. After taking a deep breath, Devi grabs the special cinnamon loaf tin she usually only retrieves from her closet shelf once a year from the passenger seat and makes her way into the building.

She follows the signs advertising _Anything Goes_ to Bridges Theater, only to be redirected toward the dance classrooms by an overwrought stage manager. From there, it’s not hard to find the right one. She can hear the metallic slap of tap shoes from the stairwell.

Eleanor doesn’t notice her entrance—she’s too busy stage-cheesin’ at herself in the wall of mirrors. With a private smile, Devi edges along the far wall, settling down to wait beside Eleanor’s duffle.

“That was…well, it was better,” Eleanor says once the number comes to an end. “But where’s the star power, people?”

“Taking a nap like I wanna be,” one of the dancers says.

“You guys, you know my feelings about ending a night with a lackluster performance.”

“I thought your performance was lustrous,” says a dude sitting against the mirror. Since he has a headset hanging from his neck, Devi can only assume he’s crew.

“Perfect,” another dancer says. “So you’re safe.”

“Let’s all go home,” another one chimes in.

“You guys,” Eleanor says. “One more. For me?” She pouts at them.

After a second, they murmur their agreement.

“You should probably give them a water break, at least,” the crewman says to Eleanor.

“Fine. Five minutes everyone.”

As a chorus of _thank you, five_ sounds back at Eleanor, Devi pushes to her feet.

Eleanor falters on her way over to her bag, her eyes going wide as she stoops down to snatch up her water bottle. “What are you doing here?”

“Thought we could, I don’t know…” Devi trails off, nodding to the snowman tin tucked under her arm. “Talk.”

“Is that what I think it is?”

Devi shrugs. “Complete with signature peppermint frosting.”

“It should taste like toothpaste, but instead it tastes of the blissful innocence of the holiday season,” Eleanor says dreamily. Then, in a comically theatrical shift, her expression turns to mistrust, to resignation. “Oliver, tell the cast they’re excused, actually.”

“Um, they can all hear you,” the crewman—Oliver, apparently—says.

Eleanor ignores him, pointing a stern finger in Devi’s face. “I’m not doing this because your cinnamon loaf holds power over me, I’ll have you know. I understand that this is a bribe because you’re now fighting with Fabiola, too, and you think I’m pathologically incapable of holding a grudge. I’m just making the very pointed choice to hear you out anyway.”

“Because…?” Devi rolls her wrist in a prompting gesture.

Eleanor blinks. “Moral high ground…reasons…?”

“Because my cinnamon loaf holds exactly that much power over you.”

Eleanor flips her hair over her shoulder and starts to float out of the room. “Believe what you want to believe.”

Understanding that she’s supposed to follow or else ruin a perfect exit, Devi rolls her eyes, hoists Eleanor’s bag up over her shoulder, and jogs to catch up.

They end up back at the theater, Eleanor leading Devi all the way to the dressing rooms backstage.

Devi sets the cinnamon loaf down next to a makeup bag, which Eleanor starts packing as Devi leans against the counter.

“So,” she says. Devi had rehearsed what she’d say a thousand times over the course of the day, but now the only thing that pops out is, “That Oliver kid totally has a crush on you, huh?”

“Oh, my god,” Eleanor says, lowering her voice so the two other girls lingering in the room don’t hear. “He’s so obvious about it, right?”

“I mean, yeah. I saw you two interacting for all of three minutes and managed to clock that shit.”

“Exactly.”

“Are you crushing back?” Devi plucks one of the lipsticks out of Eleanor’s bag—a shimmering pink shade—and uncaps it. “He’s cute.”

“Oh, he’s positively adorable,” Eleanor says, collecting used cotton pads and tossing them in the trash.

Devi waits until the other girls finish leaving before she responds. “But…?”

Eleanor heaves out a sigh. “I like a bit more cat-and-mouse in my romantic encounters.”

Devi smooths some of the lipstick on. “So, bat him around a bit.”

Eleanor gives a _hmm_ of amusement as she passes over a tissue so Devi can blot.

“Look,” Devi says after she leans over and tosses the tissue in the bin. “I get why my fight with Nalini upsets you.”

“But,” Eleanor says, pulling out a chair and dropping into it. “It’s not my relationship to have a say in.”

Devi blinks. “Yeah, exactly.”

“I know.” Eleanor pulls the snowman tin closer to her, opens it, and inhales deeply. “It’s just…I think you take it for granted.”

“What?”

“Motherlessness,” Eleanor says, snapping the lid back on the tin.

Devi feels her eyebrows come together. “Okay…?”

“You got to choose it for yourself,” Eleanor says, speaking to her makeup bag, “and I just kind of think it’s selfish of you to be able to unchoose it and just…not.”

“I didn’t choose this, though,” Devi says, pushing off the counter. “Nalini’s the one who disowned me, okay?”

“Fab told me about the tuition thing,” Eleanor says with a frown.

“And you still think I’m making a mistake by not talking to her,” Devi says.

“I guess so,” Eleanor says, and then cranks around in her chair so she can look up at Devi. “I just think she probably said everything she said out of grief and I imagine her alone in that house…living with so many ghosts. I—I feel for her.”

“She doesn’t know how to be a part of my life when she’s not allowed to run it,” Devi says— _pleads_. Because it’s not like she hasn’t thought the exact same thing about what it’d be like to spend every day alone in that house, memories of Mohan in each room. But… “Trying to build my life around her expectations isn’t good for me, El.”

“Maybe not now,” Eleanor says. “But what if you’re making a forever decision with impermanent feelings?”

“Why is it so important to you?” Devi asks. “Why do you need me to say I might eventually forgive her when all I wanna do is be angry?”

Eleanor is quiet for a long time, her expression thoughtful. “You know,” she says finally, “I legitimately thought I would die when you and Fabiola moved away.”

“El…”

“No, listen,” Eleanor says, standing. “I know you guys moving away had nothing to do with me—just like you fighting with Nalini has nothing to do with me—but still. Watching you guys move on, while I stayed here. Getting left behind…”

“We didn’t _leave_ you,” Devi says, feeling her patience fraying like old rope. “You wanted to be here because you could go to school and—”

“And audition,” Eleanor says, cutting her off. “I know! It’s just, making that choice and living with the consequences are two totally different things!”

“Do you regret it?”

Eleanor blinks. “That’s not the point.”

“No?” Devi asks, planting her hands on her hips. “And what is?”

“I don’t know!”

“Don’t do that,” Devi says. “That’s just gonna piss me off.”

“You’re already pissed off,” Eleanor says.

“I’m trying not to be!”

The angry words reverberate through the room, making both women pause. And then start to laugh.

“I guess,” Eleanor says, all nervous fingers and hunched shoulders in a way that makes her look unnaturally small. “It just makes me nervous, seeing you walk away from one of the most important relationships in your life.”

Devi sighs, and reaches out to tug Eleanor into her. Eleanor shuffles into the hug willingly enough, and Devi lays her cheek atop her head.

“You get that it’s not easy for me, right?” Devi asks. “I’m not, like, _happy_ about the way things have played out.”

Devi feels Eleanor’s whole body expand with the deep breath she takes. “When you put it like that… I’m being pretty selfish, huh?”

“I dunno about that,” Devi says. “Self-centered, maybe.”

“How is that different?” Eleanor asks, pulling away.

“It’s totally different.”

Eleanor frowns skeptically as she starts to sling her various bags over her shoulders.

“It’s about the connotation,” Devi expands, walking backward for the door to the dressing room. “One is expressly negative, the other is more neutral.”

Eleanor shrugs. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

They make it outside before either of them speaks again.

“Are you coming over?” Eleanor asks.

Devi’s stomach churns. “It’s a little late for our movie night.”

“Maybe,” Eleanor says, and they both come to a stop at her car. “But it’s not too late for staying up all night talking.”

“Talking?” Devi asks. “Or yelling?”

Eleanor shrugs. “Probably both.”

That makes Devi smile. “Yeah, fine. I’ll follow you there.”

###

“I thought it was implied that our regular Friday night activities were canceled,” Fabiola says when she answers the door.

“I invited her,” Eleanor says, pushing past Fabiola and into the apartment. “She showed up to rehearsal bearing cinnamon loaf.”

“Devious,” Fabiola says with grudging respect.

“I like to think of it more as a gesture of goodwill,” Devi says, jutting out her chin.

“Well, I’m more of a nog person,” Fabiola says, not moving from the doorway.

“Yeah,” Devi says. “I know.”

“I smell a catfight.” Jonah’s voice comes from just inside the apartment. “Do you think I should start filming?”

Eleanor, who pops her head out from the kitchen, hisses at him.

“Me-ow,” he says.

“Jonah, shut up,” Devi says.

“Don’t tell him what to do!” Fabiola says.

“Oh, my god!” Eleanor stomps over to the door, grabs Devi by the sleeve, and tugs her inside. “Devi and I made up, Fab, so there’s pretty much no reason for you to even be mad at her anymore.”

“Yeah,” Devi says, stumbling over the threshold. “You said really mean things to me. I’m the one who gets to be mad.”

Jonah tuts from his place on the couch. “No one is safe from the scald when Fabiola spills tea. Least of all you, girlie.”

Devi turns a pleading look on Eleanor. “If you let me punch him just once, I swear to god I’ll be nice to him for the rest of my life.”

“Devi,” Eleanor says, pursing her lips so she’s the very picture of unamused.

Jonah pops up from the couch and grabs onto Fabiola, human-shield style. “Subdue your guest, please!”

Fabiola huffs, slamming the front door shut and shrugging off Jonah before marching down the hall. “My room! Now!”

“You’re not invited,” Eleanor says to Jonah, flicking her hair at him before tugging Devi down the hallway.

“So, you guys made up, huh?” Fabiola asks before they’re fully in the room. She’s sitting, centered, against her headboard, flicking her watch clasp open and closed with nimble fingers. Then, noticing Eleanor’s intent to crawl up onto the bed to join her, she says, “No crumbs in my bed.”

Devi hadn’t even noticed Eleanor cradling the snowman tin under her arm. She snorts.

Pouting, Eleanor pulls out Fabiola’s desk chair.

Devi crosses her arms over her chest, remaining in the doorway. “Sounds like it bothers you. That El and I made up.”

“It might,” Fabiola says. “But that depends.”

Devi tilts her head. “On?”

“You guys,” Eleanor says around a mouthful of cinnamon loaf. “Can’t we skip ahead to when you two hug? This pastry was not meant to be enjoyed with a side of ire.”

“Remember in fifth grade—” Fabiola starts.

“Here we go,” Devi says, throwing up her hands.

“—when you convinced Eleanor that sneaking into the DNA room at the ScienCenter and downloading some Drake song was the key to unlocking genetic mutations just because you didn’t want to try it alone?”

“Eleanor wanted to be convinced, okay? She loves a good wives’ tale.”

“You landed her in detention!”

“So?” Devi says. “I got detention for that, too!”

“I’m just saying,” Fabiola says, somehow sitting up even straighter, “you often manipulate Eleanor’s point of view to suit your own narrative.”

“Oh, like you’re so blameless!”

“I never—”

“Eighth grade!” Devi says, cutting her off. “The alchemy phase!”

“I was being supportive!”

“Both of you shut up!” Eleanor shouts, using the full power of her lungs so the exclamation reverberates through the room.

Fabiola and Devi blink at her.

“As much as listening to you guys bicker over me like divorcing parents satisfies both my need for attention and my desire to be the central figure in family drama,” Eleanor says, and then pauses to take and exhale a deep breath. “It’s weird when you act like I’m not right here. An adult. Capable of making my own decisions, thank you very much.”

“My bad,” Devi says.

At the same time, Fabiola offers up a meek, “Sorry, El.”

“Now,” Eleanor says. “Fabiola. Tell Devi you’re sorry you let your frustration with her get in the way of being a supportive friend.”

Devi raises her eyebrows and shoves one ear in Fabiola’s direction expectantly.

“I _was_ being a supportive friend,” Fabiola says, pouting.

Eleanor rolls her eyes. “Say you’re sorry for being insensitively supportive, then.”

“That’ll be a shitty apology,” Devi says.

“Oh, my god.”

“Fine!” Fabiola says. “I’m sorry.” She pauses, softening. “Honestly, I am. It was shitty of me to bring up the Paxton stuff.”

“Thank you,” Devi says. “Apology accepted.”

“Okay,” Eleanor says. “Your turn.”

“What would I even apologize for?”

“Maybe for lashing out at everyone around you for not supporting you when you literally refuse to ask for what you need,” Fabiola offers.

“Okay, that was a bit too on the tip of your tongue,” Devi says, but then she stumbles forward a step and then another, dropping down on the end of the bed. “But I am. Sorry that I’m like that.”

“I just don’t like seeing you suffer,” Fabiola says. “And when I see a clearly fixable problem, I get frustrated that it goes unfixed.”

“I get that,” Devi says, kicking her legs up onto the bed and leaning against the wall. “I do. Just—” she pauses, taking in a deep breath. “Sometimes I don’t want to talk about fixing things. Sometimes I just wanna stew.”

“Whoa,” Eleanor says, tipping back in the desk chair. “Déjà vu.”

Fabiola raises her eyebrows. “Huh?”

“Just an hour ago, Devi was all ‘ _just let me be pissed_ ’,” Eleanor explains.

Devi frowns at the impression. “My voice isn’t that deep.”

“Yeah-huh,” Eleanor says.

Devi turns to Fabiola, who shrugs. “It’s a very alluring kind of husky.”

“I don’t think that makes me feel better.”

“Guess you’ll just have to stew about it,” Eleanor says, popping more cinnamon loaf in her mouth, entirely too pleased with herself.

Devi purses her lips, unamused. “Okay.”

Grinning, Eleanor sets the snowman tin aside on the desk and then dives for the bed. “You guys!” she says, as she lands with a great bounce. “We’re a happy family again!”

“Oh, so you want us to go back to acting like your parents?” Devi asks.

“Please,” Eleanor says, shifting onto her back, her head resting against Fabiola’s thigh and her legs thrown over Devi’s. “You never stopped.”

“In that case,” Fabiola says, “I feel obligated to ask what you ate today that wasn’t mostly sugar.”

Eleanor scrunches up her face thoughtfully. Eventually, she says, “I had crackers during rehearsal.”

Fabiola glances down at her watch. “I don’t really feel like cooking, but we do have hummus and peppers in the fridge.”

“Sold,” Eleanor says, and the three of them climb off the bed.

Jonah’s rinsing out a glass when they pile into the kitchen.

“The sisterhood survives, I take it?”

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Fabiola says, hip-checking him.

“Yeah, Jonah,” Devi says. “You might give off the impression you don’t like having me around or something.”

He almost smiles. To cover it, he gives her an up-and-down glance before gesturing to her lips and saying, “Not your color, sweetie.”

Devi rolls her eyes.

“He’s not wrong,” Eleanor says once he’s returned to the living room.

“Shut up,” Devi says. “I look good in every color.”

“Objection sustained,” Fabiola says, pulling up out of the fridge with a bag of peppers and hummus in her hands, an uncut cucumber tucked under her arm. “I think the sparkles look nice.”

“Speaking of, what was this even doing with your stage makeup?” Devi asks, pulling the cutting board out of a cabinet. “I thought sparkles were too dangerous for the stage.”

“They are,” Eleanor says. “Especially on top of this megawatt smile.” She flashes one at them before explaining. “I used it for the photo shoot we did. For the website.”

“Have you sold a lot of tickets?” Fabiola asks, going to work on the cucumber.

“More than last summer,” Eleanor says. “People can’t resist the allure of Cole Porter.”

“Yeah,” Devi says. “I’m sure that’s it.”

“I’m not,” Fabiola says. “I’ve been listening to his music for the last month, and I don’t get it at all.”

“My shower-belting is not the same,” Eleanor insists, sneaking a slice of cucumber off the cutting board. “Just wait til you hear it all with a live orchestra.”

“On five separate occasions,” Fabiola says.

“I’m sorry,” Devi says. “You bought how many tickets?”

Eleanor giggles. “She was trying to one-up Sharon and Dad.”

“Alcohol was a factor,” Fabiola says defensively, rinsing off the knife.

“Tell me which nights you’re going,” Devi says. “I’ll buy tickets, too.”

Fabiola looks up from the sink to smile at her, and Devi feels an all-over tension release.

“You should really be saving your money,” Fabiola tells her.

“So I’ll only go two additional nights,” Devi says with a shrug.

“You guys are definitely my favorite parents,” Eleanor says, grabbing the hummus off the counter and heading back for the bedroom.

Laughing, Devi trails after her, checking her phone as she goes. She has an unread text from Ben: _How’d everything go?_

She folds herself into a criss-cross seat on the floor of Fabiola’s room as she texts him back. _Uncaring universe totally thwarted. I am the master of my own fate._

“Who’s that?” Eleanor asks, settling with her back against Fabiola’s bed and nodding at Devi’s phone.

“No one,” she says, a knee-jerk reaction, and drops her phone into her lap.

“No one, huh? No one’s making you smile your Come Hither smile?”

“Who’s making Devi smile her Come Hither smile?” Fabiola asks, joining them on the ground with a plate full of vegetables.

“Devi?” Eleanor asks, head cocked.

“Okay, fine,” Devi says, licking her lips. “I guess have a confession to make.”

Fabiola and Eleanor stare expectantly at her.

“The night before I started the internship, you know how you told me I should hook up with someone, El?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But you didn’t find anyone.”

“That’s what I said, yeah.” Devi picks invisible lint off her sweatpants. “But, uh, I did hook up. With Ben, actually. On accident.”

Eleanor gasps, and then a painful silence ensues.

“I knew it!” Fabiola says after a prolonged moment, snapping her fingers. “I knew I was right that there was something weird and destructive happening there!”

“You’re not seriously gonna try and justify those mean things you said to me,” Devi says, shooting her a glare.

“You call it justification, I say intuition.”

“You had no clue,” Devi says. “You were just waiting for me to screw up. Which is messed up, okay, just admit it.”

“Hey,” Fabiola says primly. “You don’t know what I know and don’t know.”

“I think you should probably just give this one up, babe,” Eleanor says, patting Fabiola’s leg.

“I’m a scientist,” Fab pushes. “My brain is highly adept at processing data and reaching conclusions.”

Devi half hoists herself off the floor so she can grab one of the pillows from Fabiola’s bed and smack her in the face with it.

“I give!” Fabiola says, throwing up her arms to shield herself from a second and third blow. “I’m sorry!”

“Thank you,” Devi says, sitting back and tossing the pillow aside.

“So,” Eleanor says, waggling her eyebrows. “How was it?”

Heat rushes into Devi’s cheeks.

“I knew you liked him,” Fabiola says, watching her.

Devi heaves out a deep breath. “Yeah. It was…honestly, it was just a really nice night.”

Eleanor coos, but then abruptly shifts to smacking at Devi’s leg.

“What?” Devi asks, eyes widening.

“So that’s why you were so mean to him at work! Because you totally like him more than you wanted to!” Eleanor shakes her head. “Classic Devi.”

Devi blinks. “You don’t know I was mean to him.”

Eleanor throws her head back in laughter. “It’s cute that you think you can get away with denying it.”

“Okay, so I wasn’t, like, warm,” Devi says. “But I wouldn’t call my behavior toward him mean, either.”

“Oh, damn,” Fabiola says.

“You _really_ like him,” Eleanor adds.

“It’s strange,” Devi says, looking down at her lap. “He’s somehow both really patient with me and a persistent asshole. And I think—I think it’s been kinda exactly what I need.”

A camera shutter noise draws Devi’s attention away from her sweats.

“You have a really cute smile on your face,” Eleanor explains, handing over her phone so Devi can see the picture.

“I need to meet this guy,” Fabiola says, “pronto.”

Devi’s stuck staring at her totally— _ugh, fuck you, Ben_ —twitterpated expression, so it takes a moment for Fabiola’s demand to sink in.

“Ooh,” Eleanor says, “bring him to opening night!”

Devi’s first instinct is to make some excuse, to give into the jolt of panic that sends shockwaves through her gut.

Before the unsettling sensation subsides, Fabiola says, “That won’t work. We won’t be able to properly vet him.”

“So we can meet for an early dinner,” Eleanor says.

“What time do you have to be at the theater?” Fabiola asks.

“My call time is 7, but—”

“You’ll wanna be there at 6:30,” Fabiola finishes for her. “Yeah, we know the drill. Let’s meet at 6.”

“Where?” Eleanor asks, but then pauses with a pepper halfway to her mouth, a knowing smile on her face. “Of course! Gushi.”

Fabiola hums. “It has been a while.”

“And it’s never that crowded in the summer.”

“Sold,” Fabiola says.

They both turn to Devi.

“Yeah, that sounds cool,” she says, sincere despite the fact that she’s rolling her eyes. She can already picture Ben’s excitement, and it makes her stomach pitch.

###

“Think fast,” Ben says late Monday morning. “Blue or black ink?”

“Black,” Devi says, watching him uncap another pen from the cup on his desk and test it on a legal pad full of chicken scratch. “What kind of heathen uses blue?”

He glances up at her, expression beckoning her into Wonderland.

“Stop that,” she says.

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like you’re seconds from throwing discretion to the wind.”

“Whoops.” He sucks his lower lip into his mouth. “That obvious, am I?”

“Kind of.”

“Well,” he says, leaning over his pad once more. “It’s your fault for having strong pen-ink feelings. You should know how crazy that makes guys.”

She rolls her eyes. “There’s so much wrong with that statement, I don’t even know where to start tearing it apart.”

“Personally,” Ben says, ignoring this with a grin, “I’m a green ink fan.” He plucks a lime green pen from his cup and holds it up as evidence.

Devi shakes her head. “Super unprofessional.”

“I like to think of it more as _whimsical_.”

“Speaking of whimsy,” Devi says, trying for casual but pretty sure she’s hindered by the way her heart leaps up into her throat. “How do you feel about musicals?”

He cocks an eyebrow at her. “You’re extra dreamy today.”

“I—” She feels her expression transform into a question mark. “What?”

“Indulging my random questions, asking one of your own.” He licks his lips. “I think I might be swooning.”

“It’s not a random question,” she says, “but you _are_ making me never want to ask you anything again.”

“Absolutely crazy method of storytelling, but that only makes me respect them more.”

Devi blinks. “What?”

“That’s how I feel about musicals.”

She lets out a sharp breath through her nose, and Ben laughs.

“If it wasn’t a random question,” he says after a moment, “why did you ask?”

“Not sure I want to tell you now,” she says, keeping her eyes trained on her computer.

He whines. “Devi.”

Again, the unexpected use of her name totally disarms her. She feels her expression open up, a blooming flower.

“My friends want to meet you,” she rushes to say before Ben can notice or worse, comment on, the painfully obvious shift. “And they thought it’d be cool if you came to opening night with us. Eleanor’s in a production of _Anything Goes_.”

“ _They_ thought?” he asks, carefully neutral for probably the first time in his life.

“Me, too,” she says. “I thought so, too.”

He smiles. “When is it?”

“This Friday.”

He clicks out the nib of his dumb green pen and writes down a note for himself. “It’s a date.”

“Yeah,” Devi says, wanting to be on the same page. “It is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Bethany. <3
> 
> Who doesn't need a little escapism right now?
> 
> Seriously, though, thank you to everyone who read this story and fell as much in love with this universe as I have while writing it. I hope you guys find the final installment satisfying. As a note, there is more explicit content - though it's more of a garnish this chapter than the whole meal, as it had been in chapter one. Enjoy!

“You know, I could have just swung by your apartment on my way into the city,” Devi says for the third time since getting in Ben’s car. 

He had insisted on picking her up for their date despite the fact that he lives much closer to UCLA’s campus, and she’d agreed because his enthusiasm had been infectious. Of course, she’d assumed—wrongly, apparently—his offer meant that he was capable of getting behind the wheel without totally losing his shit.

They both jerk against their seatbelts as Ben slams on the brakes.

“This is better, though,” he says, nodding a little too fast.

“For who? The Porsche crash dummies that’ll get a day off when we prove the airbags work?”

“So I’m a little rusty,” Ben says, trying for offhand. Devi’s not fooled, though. She sees the beads of sweat gathering at his temple. “I don’t need to use my car all that often.”

“Wait,” Devi says, gripping the edge of her seat. “You do have a valid license, though, right?”

“The time for asking practical questions is passed,” he says, and he seriously needs to stop checking the rear view mirror so often and _pay attention to the traffic in front of him_. “Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride until we reach a complete stop.”

“ _Ben_ ,” she grits out.

“Athena, relax,” he says, his voice cracking ever-so-slightly. “I wouldn’t have offered to drive you if I wasn’t _legally_ allowed to.”

“Don’t _Athena, relax_ me, dude. You absolutely misrepresented your abilities to me, so a little skepticism is well within my rights.”

He shoots a look over at her. “Misrepresented my abilities? How?”

“Eyes on the road!”

“Stop yelling! You’re freaking me out!”

“You were already freaked out!”

“But you’re not helping!” Ben yells, merging onto the off ramp. And then he promptly slams on the brakes the second the tail lights on the car in front of him flash at them.

Silence descends on the car for a beat, and then they’re both laughing—more a release of tension than out of amusement.

“I’m telling my friends you tried to kill me with your reckless driving,” Devi says as he pulls into a space in the Melnitz Hall lot.

“Ha, ha,” he says, shifting into park and engaging the emergency brake.

She raises her eyebrows at him, and then pushes open her door and exits the car.

“Wait,” Ben says as she shoves the door closed. He scrambles to follow her. “You are joking, right?”

“We’ll see,” she says, heading off on foot for Gushi.

“That’s not funny!” He jogs to catch up with her. “Tell me you understand how that’s not funny.”

“Maybe not for you,” she says, “but it sounds like it would be pretty funny for me, honestly.”

He catches her by the elbow, forcing her to stop. “Please do not do that.”

She studies him, taking in everything from the sheen on his worry-crinkled forehead to the way she can see his other hand fussing with something shoved in his pants pocket—a pen probably. 

Leaning in to steal a peck, she says, “I’m not going to.”

His shoulders relax. “Good.”

“I’m just as invested in them liking you as you are, you know,” she says, starting forward again.

“That can’t be true,” he says. “You don’t look anywhere near as desperate as I feel.”

She shakes her head. “I’m just better at wearing it than you, dude.”

“Well, that’s probably true of most things,” he says, and something in his tone has her glancing back over her shoulder. The skin on the back of her neck tingles when their eyes meet.

Eleanor and Fabiola are already waiting on Gushi’s patio when Devi approaches with Ben in tow.

“Did you guys already put in your order?” she asks them in lieu of a greeting.

“No,” Fabiola says, and then checks her watch.

“Chill,” Devi says, grabbing Fabiola’s arm and tugging her over to the short line. “We’re good on time.”

“Hello, sailor,” Eleanor says, eyeing Ben.

“Is that a reference?” Ben asks. “Because the show is set on a boat?”

Devi pivots, shooting him a funny look. “Um, spoiler alert much?”

He gives her a funny look back. “The show has been around since the Great Depression.”

“Look out. Someone read the Wikipedia page.”

“And bought the cast album.”

Devi rolls her eyes at him.

Eleanor perks up, though. “Sutton Foster?”

“No, uh, Patti LuPone,” he says.

“Oh, yeah.” She loops her arm through his. “We’re going to get along swimmingly.”

Ben laughs, color rising in his cheeks.

“It’s like they’re speaking in code,” Devi says, and Fabiola nods.

“You’re just jealous that your friend likes me better than you,” Ben says.

“There’s plenty of my love to go around,” Eleanor says. “No need to get greedy.”

“Yeah, Ben,” Devi says. “Back off.”

He waggles his eyebrows at her.

After they put in their orders, Eleanor and Fab go to pick out a table while Devi and Ben wait at the window.

“So far, so good,” Ben says, leaning close. “Right?”

Devi scoffs. “Eleanor’s the easy one to win over.”

“You’re saying I didn’t have to spend the whole week listening to the same album over and over?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” She pauses, studying his face. “Did you really do that?”

He shrugs.

“Try hard.”

Their order number is called, and Ben steps forward to accept several styrofoam containers from the cook.

“Did you also brush up on your robotics?” she asks, taking a couple from him.

“I clicked around on the Honeybee Robotics website,” he says. “You said that’s where Fabiola works, right?”

“Good memory.”

“That’s probably the highest compliment you’ve paid me to date,” he says, following after her to the table.

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”

“Don’t get used to what?” Eleanor asks as they take their seats and start passing out the food.

“Compliments,” Devi says.

“You give great compliments!” Eleanor says, accepting a carton from Ben.

“Thank you, Eleanor,” Devi says, and then sticks her tongue out at Ben.

He presses his lips into a thin line.

“So, Ben!” Fabiola says forcefully, smacking her hand down on the tabletop. “You a grad student?”

He startles, blinking at Devi for a second before turning his attention to Fab. “No, actually.”

“I thought you were interning with Devi.”

“I share an office with her,” Ben clarifies. “But I guess I’m technically a paralegal?”

Fabiola raises her eyebrows. “You guess?”

“I am.”

“How did I not know that?” Devi asks.

“Debilitating self-involvement?” Ben suggests.

Devi scoops a sprout out of her stir fry and flings it into his lap.

“Hey! These are some of my nicest pants!”

“Yeah,” Eleanor says, staring directly at Devi, an unsettling gleam in her eye. “I can’t help but notice how normally you’re dressed, Benjamin.”

“Um,” Ben says, looking up from blotting at the sauce smear on his crotch. “Thank you?”

“Eleanor,” Devi says warningly.

“It’s just, your outlandish wardrobe has been talked up _so much_ , I was expecting something flashier.”

“Huh,” Ben says, turning an entirely too pleased look on Devi. “Is that so?”

“Fuck me,” she says, staring determinedly at her food.

“I wouldn’t feel too flattered,” Fabiola says. “She also spent a significant amount of time criticizing your basketball abilities.”

Ben nods. “Well, I did spend a pitiful amount of time playing trashcan basketball just to get under her skin.”

“Congrats,” Fabiola says dryly. “It worked.”

Devi stabs violently at a hunk of tofu with her fork, wishing the self-directed _pitiful_ wasn’t currently burrowing its way into her heart.

“I’d like to return to the discussion of wardrobe,” Eleanor says.

“Yeah,” Ben says, grinning at Devi. “Me too.”

“I’m going to murder all of you,” Devi says.

“Where’s the flair?” Eleanor presses, ignoring Devi. “Where’s the pizazz?”

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks.

Eleanor nods.

He leans into her to stage-whisper, “This is my first official date with Devi. I wanted to wear something she wouldn’t feel compelled to make fun of.”

Eleanor clasps a hand over her heart.

Fabiola clears her throat, then, before asking, “What are your intentions toward my friend, exactly?”

“Um…”

Devi rips her eyes away from the pastel blue Oxford Ben’s wearing—which she’d just been noticing complements his eyes—to glare at her friend.

“What kind of weird-ass question is that?” she asks.

“A pertinent one,” Fabiola says, glaring back.

“Something Fabiola and Devi have in common,” Eleanor says, “is a protective streak a mile wide.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben says, nodding along blankly to this information.

“That, and a certain intensity,” Eleanor says.

“Right,” Devi says, eyes flickering over to Eleanor. “Whereas you are totally laid back.”

“Fine,” Eleanor says. “The intense thing is something we all share.”

“You have the power to put my friend in a very vulnerable position,” Fabiola says, rounding on Ben again.

“I—yeah,” Ben says after floundering for a second. “I understand that.”

Fabiola frowns, silently skeptical. “I sure hope so.”

“Cool,” Devi says. “So, moving on. How cold do you think it’s gonna get in the theater?”

The table is encased in silence for a tense beat.

“I brought a hoodie for you,” Fabiola says. “It’s in my car.”

Devi reaches over to tug affectionately at her earlobe.

###

“So,” Ben says, his voice filling the empty hallway. “You talk about me a lot, huh?”

“Nope,” Devi says, and then turns pointedly to study the bulletin board full of audition and recital and department announcements. “I wouldn’t say that.”

They still have half an hour to kill before the house even opens, and Fabiola’s abandoned the two of them to wait out front for Jonah.

Ben _hmm_ s, and when he speaks again, she’s surprised to find he’s stepped up to the board behind her. “Your friends sure seem like they would.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know how it escaped your notice, but they’re freaks, so.” She shrugs. “You can’t believe everything they say.”

He laughs, and the sound is warm and rough like a flannel blanket as it settles around her neck. “You do seem to have a type.”

She peeks behind her shoulder, and he’s _right there_ , grinning at her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.

“The people you care about,” he says, and she feels the faintest brush of his hands hovering at her hips. “You have a type.”

Devi turns back to the wall, flicking at an ad calling for a podcast co-host. “Which is?”

“Nerdy.” His breath is hot on her ear.

She wonders if he can feel her shiver. They’re not actually touching, but she can still clock how warm he is.

“Dude, what are you waiting for?” she asks after a moment, still staring ahead but no longer taking in anything the bulletin board has to offer.

“Huh?”

“Just touch me already.”

“Wasn’t sure it was okay, here in public.”

“We’re not at work, surrounded by coworkers, right? That’s pretty much my only stipulation.”

“That is _very_ useful information to have,” he says and promptly drags her flush against him with one hand splayed wide against her belly.

Her stomach dives into a somersault off the crest of a mountain. Just like that, her body is offering up sense memory after sense memory of _wide palms_ and _prolific tongue_ and _snapping bow-string hips_.

“Happy?” he asks, his breath on her ear once again eliciting a shiver.

“Makes two of us,” she says, slipping her fingers between his and gripping tight as she rolls her hips against him.

His responding laugh has a desperate edge to it. “How long do we have until the show starts?”

“Uh.” She pauses, tugging her phone out of her bra with her free hand. “Over an hour.”

He drags her loose hair over her shoulder so he can nuzzle into the crook of her neck and asks, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That your car is hella nice, and it’d be a shame not to take advantage of that?”

He shakes his head once, and she sways lightly with the movement. “So, that’s a no. Not exactly, anyway.”

“Why?” She pulls just loose enough from his grasp to twist and face him. “Where were you thinking?”

“Deserted classroom,” he says, his hands finding her hips. “More immediate.”

“Of course that’s your priority,” Devi says, toying idly with a button on his shirt.

“And yours was…what?”

“Luxuriousness.”

“Right,” he says, squeezing her. “Of course.”

“There you guys are!” Fabiola’s voice crashes down the hall, causing Devi to jump and shove Ben away from her.

He stumbles backward a few steps, grunting. “Subtle.”

“Sorry,” Devi says, frowning at herself. “But this is also why a random-ass classroom would never work, dude. I’m no good at saving face.”

“You can say that again,” Jonah says, flashing Devi a sharp smile and then turning to give Ben a once-over. “Enchanté.”

“That’s Fabiola and Eleanor’s roommate,” Devi explains for Ben while grimacing back at Jonah.

“Nice to meet you, uh…”

“Jonah,” Jonah says, holding out his hand.

“They’re about to open the house,” Fabiola says.

“Great,” Devi says, starting the charge down the hall. “We should go find our seats immediately.”

“Like ‘em gruff, do you?” She hears Jonah asking behind her and rolls her eyes.

“The more forceful, the better,” Ben replies, and Devi swears she feels his eyes dragging down the length of her back.

Jonah trills obnoxiously.

“Good lord,” Fabiola says under her breath.

Devi nods her agreement.

The auditorium is nearly empty when the group enters.

“So,” Jonah says, and Devi glances back to find that he’s looped his arm through Ben’s. “You’re sitting next to me, right?”

“Uh, sure,” Ben says gamely. “Sounds fun.”

“You can’t just sit anywhere,” Devi says, “the tickets are labeled.”

“Oh, honey, nobody cares,” Jonah says.

“You know what,” Devi says, her temper goading her to find a way out of hanging out with Jonah in the empty theatre for a full hour. “I just remembered, I wanted to show Ben the, uh—the place where I…”

“Right!” Ben says, brightly. “I was so looking forward to that.”

“Exactly,” Devi says, unable to look at Fabiola. “So I should go show him.” She grabs onto Ben’s free arm and starts dragging him up the aisle.

“It would have been less conspicuous if you’d just left without saying anything!” Fabiola calls after them.

Devi flips her off.

“So,” Ben says as they push out into the lobby through the heavy theater doors. “Improv is not your thing, huh?”

“You could have helped me fill in the blank, you know,” she says, gliding her hand down his arm until she can lock their fingers together.

“I never went to this school,” he says, letting her tug him out into the parking lot. “How am I supposed to know what you’d want to show me?”

That gives her pause. “Why do you live so close to campus? Why did I find you in a student bar?”

“My roommate goes here,” he says. “Though I use the word _go_ loosely, since it implies actually attending class.”

Devi shakes her head, processing this information. “My brush with death gets more and more traumatic.”

“For the last time,” Ben says, squeezing her hand and stepping off the sidewalk, forcing her to shuffle after him. “I was not going to murder you.”

“You thought about smothering me with your _Rick and Morty_ shower curtain.”

“That shower curtain really bothers you, huh?”

“It’s a crime against humanity,” she says, dancing ahead of him and turning to walk backward toward the car.

“Does that mean shower sex at my place is out of the question?”

She scoffs. “I don’t want those assholes watching me get off.”

He laughs as he fishes his keys out of his pocket. “Is there an asshole you _do_ want watching you get off?”

She backs up against the side of his car and gives his hand a tug, pulling him into her. “There is this one insufferable nerd…”

Ben hums, presses his lips into her temple. “Tell me more.”

“He’s super unpleasant,” she says obligingly. “In that charming kind of way.”

He gasps with mock surprise, and it sends a tickle-squirm down her spine. “Wait a second. You once called _me_ charming and unpleasant.”

“Ben,” she whines.

The car beeps in response as it unlocks.

With a coo of pleasure, she pushes off the car and yanks the back door open, shoving a duffle bag across the bench and onto the floor to make room.

Ben follows after her, planting one knee on the seat and his other foot on the ground. When their eyes meet, he titters, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I haven’t fooled around in a car since high school. When I was, like, two-thirds the size I am now.”

She shakes her head at him. “No way were you getting any action in high school.”

His eyebrows tick up. “Jealous?”

She rolls her eyes as she leans around him to pull the door closed. “Skeptical.”

Ben plants his elbow next to the headrest and leans his head against his wrist. “Ah, Ronnie Kaplowitz.”

Devi watches his expression go dreamy and unfocused and frowns.

“It was the night of her sister’s bat mitzvah,” he continues, “and I was but a humble virgin.”

“Dude.” She snaps her fingers in front of his face. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Ben starts, and then flushes. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Sorry.”

“How would you feel if I started reminiscing about my old hookups.”

His eyes search her face for a second, and then he grins. “So you are jealous.”

“ _Annoyed_ ,” she corrects, “that you’re thinking of some hussy—who, by the way, sounds like a terrible sister—when I’m right—”

He reaches over to cradle her face in his hands and draw her face to his.

“—here,” she finishes, breathless at finding herself peering once more into Wonderland.

“You meant what you said about not being in the office?” he asks, suddenly serious. “We’re not gonna do this only to have it push you away from me?”

Her heart itches, a scab being scratched open, at how pained he sounds. She plants a palm on his chest, nudges him until he sits straight in the seat, and then swings her leg over his hips.

“Last time we did this,” she says, “I did everything in my power to keep you from knowing me.”

He’s full-on gazing into her eyes—romance-novel style—and it’s making all the blood in her veins go molten.

Part of her wants to hold the contact, wants to find out how long it’d take for that look to fully boil her from the inside-out. But she needs to say something incredibly cheesy, and she physically cannot keep her eyes open.

“This time, I want to _because_ you know me. And I’m just starting to know you.”

She opens her eyes as soon as it’s out there to find Ben looking like the dictionary definition of _supplication_ , and she purses her lips around a smile.

After a moment, his eyebrows waggle and he says, “Since you’re dying to get to know me so bad, you’re definitely gonna need to hear the story of how I lost my virginity.”

“God,” she says, clasping his face, “You’re such an asshole,” and then kisses him.

He laughs—it tastes tangy on Devi’s tongue—and skates cold fingers up under the skirt of her dress. “Mm-hmm. And now I’m going to watch you get off.”

She shakes her head, about to tell him to stop putting all his energy into being clever and just get on with it, when he presses at her clit over the fabric of her underwear. The friction has her laughing back at him.

Without the proper leverage, the most he can do is tease her into a simmer, and just when she’s questioning whether the next sound out of her mouth will be more laughter or a frustrated whine, she can feel his movements slowing, getting jerkier.

She reaches between them to grab his wrist and tug him out of the way.

“But you haven’t—” he starts to argue.

“Not worried about that right now,” she says, sliding sideways off his lap so she can wriggle out of her underwear.

“Well, I am,” he says, grabbing onto her ankle so she doesn’t accidentally kick him in the stomach.

“Oh, it’s gonna happen,” she says, shifting back onto her knees and reaching for his belt. “May I?”

He holds up his hands. “By all means.”

It takes a bit of finagling to get them both in place—the only condom they can find is the one Eleanor gave Devi that night at the bar, and Devi hits her head against the roof of the car while getting into position—so they both sigh in equal parts relief and satisfaction when she finally sinks down onto him.

“Maybe this is better left to high-schoolers,” she says, bumping her head again as she tries to find the right angle.

“The luxury car hookup not all you dreamed it to be?” he asks, a smug grin on his face.

She clenches around him, successfully transforming his expression into one of surprised pleasure.

“Still better than _Rick and Morty_ shower sex.”

“H-how can you say that if you—” He pauses to groan as she grinds down hard.

“I don’t need to try both, dude, I already know.”

He laughs at that and grabs hold of her waist as he scoots a little lower in the bench of the backseat.

“ _Oh_ ,” she says, when the movement of it sends him deeper than before.

“Yeah?” he asks.

She nods, and they fall silent, both concentrating too hard to banter—his hands gripping her so tight she feels like her ribs might cave in and her knees squeezing his hips so hard there’s an ache.

“Hey, Ben,” she says after a while.

“Hmm?”

“You do look really nice in this shirt.”

His booming laugh fills the car, even as his hips sputter like a dying engine. But it’s still enough. She feels herself tripping into an orgasm, stomach as warm as the lingering sound of his laughter.

He goes loose beneath her a moment later, hands dropping from her waist. “Thanks.”

She snorts, pulling off him—sure to duck her head this time—and says, “You, too.”

“I meant for the compliment,” he says, eyelids drooping.

“Yeah,” Devi says, “and I meant for the sex.”

He smiles.

She hadn’t realized how sex-steamy they’d made the car until Ben pushes the door open a moment later and goosebumps immediately crawl down her legs.

“Hey,” she says, already reaching for the gym bag she’d pushed aside earlier. “Any chance you have a sweater in here? I have no idea if Fab—”

“Oh, wait, I—” he starts, and then breaks off when he sees she’s already got the bag open.

She shoots him a funny look, confused by his reaction, but then the toothbrush fully registers and she feels herself freeze.

“I wasn’t expecting to—well. But I wanted to be prepared, you know? In case you, uh, made the offer.”

She blinks at him.

“Which, judging by the expression on your face, you were not going to. So, that’s cool. Don’t feel pressure to offer now that you think I’ll be disappointed if you don’t, because I—”

“Dude!” she says, alarmed with how quickly he’s turning purple. “Breathe.”

He swallows down the rest of the ramble with a gulp.

“It’s not…” She pauses, shaking her head. “I’ve just—you’d be the first.”

He doesn’t fully unclench, but she supposes that’s fair. Neither does she.

“First what?”

“Person to spend the night. Not even Fab or El have. I always stay at their place.”

After a second, he nods. And then nods some more. And then says, “You won’t find a sweatshirt in there, but I do have something in the trunk.”

“Okay,” she says.

He nods again before getting out of the car. She stays in the backseat for a moment, drawing in a shaky breath and pushing out a shaky exhale, before following.

“Yale?” she asks, taking the blue fleece jacket he hands her and holding it out in front of her for a second before unzipping it.

“Yale,” he agrees, falling into step beside her on the way back into the theater.

“Snob.”

“Oh, yeah, and where did you do your undergrad?”

She tugs the jacket tight around her. It’s really nice—soft and smells faintly of gasoline and _Ben_. “Princeton.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shut up.”

The auditorium is much fuller when they get back, so Fabiola doesn’t hear them approach. She turns with a start when Devi collapses in the seat next to her.

“Hi,” Devi says, flashing her a sheepish grin before turning her eyes to the stage.

“Hi,” Fabiola says back.

“We were seconds from striking up a wager about how late you’d be,” Jonah says like it was painful for him to be holding it in in the few seconds it took them to get settled.

“Hurtful,” Devi says, snapping open her program.

“How much do we get for being…” Ben pauses to check his watch, “…thirteen minutes early?”

Devi lifts her head, grinning at Ben. “Excellent question.”

“ _You_ get to sleep another night having met the baseline requirements for being a good friend,” Fabiola says, “and Ben gets to keep my mostly positive impression of him.”

“Fair enough,” Devi says, grinning as she flips forward in the program, looking for Eleanor’s bio.

At the same time, Ben leans forward to ask, “Mostly?”

Fabiola hums her assent but doesn’t elaborate.

A second later, Devi feels his lips at her ear. “Two for two.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, blindly swatting at him. “We’re all very impressed with you.”

“Thank you.”

She glances up from the program a moment later to find him paging through his own with a serene smile on his face. She smiles back.

###

Eleanor is one of the first actors to make it out into the lobby, and Devi watches several strangers stop her as she makes a beeline for the group. Somehow Eleanor’s smile grows brighter with each compliment.

“You were radiant,” Devi says, pulling El into a tight hug when she finally makes it over to them.

“Kid, I think we can make you a star,” Jonah says, affecting a funny voice and bopping Eleanor lightly on the head.

“You guys liked it?” Eleanor asks Devi’s shoulder. “Really?”

“You did an incredible job,” Fabiola says, joining the hug.

After another couple seconds, Devi says. “You’re so freaking hot right now. It feels amazing.”

To which Eleanor responds, “This is a really nice coat.”

Devi finally lets go. “It’s Ben’s.”

Fabiola keeps her arm slung around Eleanor. “So feel free to rub your makeup all over it.”

“I mean,” Eleanor says, reaching over to brush at Devi’s shoulder. “That’s kind of unavoidable.”

“It’s cool,” Ben says. “I never use that thing anyway.”

“Chivalrous,” Devi deadpans.

He ignores her. “You’re a really good dancer, Eleanor.”

“Oh, stop,” Eleanor says, reaching over to whap him on the arm. “All this praise is going to inflate my ego.”

“ _Going to_?” Devi asks.

Fabiola snorts, then asks, “I assume you and the cast have plans?”

Eleanor pulls her attention away from a group on the other side of the lobby that she’d been waving to. “Yeah, we’re all going to Martin’s place.”

“Need a ride?” Fabiola checks.

“Nah,” Eleanor says, and then grabs onto both of Devi’s hands. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow morning?”

Feeling a prickle deep in her chest, Devi finds herself unable to do anything but nod.

“Okay then,” Eleanor says, and then takes a step back from the group. “Thank you all for coming.” She takes a bow, and Jonah claps obligingly. “I love you guys. _Bonsoir_!”

With that, she flounces away like she knows she’s leaving behind a captive audience.

###

It’s comfortably past eleven o’clock when Ben pulls into Devi’s apartment complex.

“So,” he says, shifting the car into park. “Thanks for inviting me tonight. It was fun.”

“I had a nice time, too,” she says, holding onto her seatbelt strap with both hands.

He nods, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. “Cool.”

“Yup.”

He glances over at her, eyebrows raised. “I guess I’ll see you Monday, then?”

Devi frowns. Usually the weekend feels far too short, but suddenly Monday seems like a million years away.

“Athena?” Ben prompts her when she remains seated and silent for several more seconds.

“My apartment’s really small,” she blurts out.

“Okay…?”

“It’s only one room.”

His expression morphs from confused to hopeful. “That wouldn’t bother me.”

“There’s, um…” She cringes. “There’s also a hole in the wall.”

“Really?” He cranes his neck to look up at her building. “I hope you’re not paying too much for rent.”

“No, it’s—” Her grip on the seatbelt tightens. “I put it there. Maintenance hasn’t been by to fix it yet.”

“You put it there?”

She nods tensely.

He blinks. “Why?”

“Mom stuff.”

“Okay,” he says, accepting this non-answer.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says, and then she unbuckles her seatbelt and tugs his keys out of the ignition. “You wanna come upstairs?”

###

“You call this a hole in the wall?” Ben asks, shaking his head as he stands in the doorway to her apartment. “I wouldn’t have even noticed if you hadn’t said something.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Quick, make a fist,” he says, reaching for her wrist and examining her hand. “So tiny!”

She snatches her hand away. “If you don’t shut up, your face is gonna look like my wall in a sec.”

He cringes away from her immediately.

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, my god, you’re totally scared of me.”

“Am I scared?” he asks, “Or am I respecting your follow-through?”

“Are you telling me you can’t do both at the same time?” she asks, locking the door behind him as he ventures further into the apartment. “That’s some weak multi-tasking, Gross.”

He turns back to her from the middle of the room, grinning.

“What?” she asks after a prolonged moment.

“Nothing,” he says, dropping his bag onto the ground. “Just happy to be here, that’s all.”

She rolls her eyes, but still finds herself grinning back. “I’m gonna take a shower. Do you need the bathroom first?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, okay.”

“In there.” She nods at the door.

While he’s gone, she does a quick scan of the room. Nothing embarrassing jumps out at her, so she gathers her pajamas and sits down on the edge of her bed.

A moment later, he emerges. “You know what that bathroom could use?”

“Say ‘ _Rick and Morty_ shower curtain’ and get your head shoved into the hole.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You’re violent tonight.”

“What can I say?” She dances past him and into the bathroom. “You bring it out in me.”

His responding laugh reverberates through the space. It makes the apartment feel vibrant in a way it usually doesn’t, and she shivers.

All her senses are tuned to high-alert with someone else in the tiny space, and her thoughts constantly skitter back to Ben as she showers.

She steps out of the bathroom thirty minutes later—makeup and contacts removed—to find him seated in her desk chair, slowly revolving and focused on her copy of _The Lightning Thief_.

“Snoop much?”

He turns to face her, lowering the book and smiling as he takes in her appearance. “Just admiring your choice in comfort literature, you great big nerd.”

She plucks the book from his hand—noting that, _damn_ , he’s already on page seventy—and then plants her hands on her hips. “How would you know this is my comfort novel?”

“Most of the reading material in here is textbooks,” he says, smiling up at her. “So either you were assigned Percy Jackson and the Olympians by one of your law professors, or it’s an important-enough series for you to want to keep on hand.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Impressive deductive reasoning.”

“Well, I was raised by Lawyer Extraordinaire, Howard Gross. Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

He stands, and suddenly they’re face to face. “My parents were very hands-off when it came to…my entire life, basically.”

She reaches out to trace the downward curve of his lips. “Did it suck?”

“A lot,” he says, nodding. Then he catches her hand and kisses the pads of her fingers. “And then, sometimes, not at all.”

She breathes out in amusement. “Being a teenager sure was something, huh?”

“How did it suck for you?”

Devi blinks at him, her eyes itching with the promise of tears. But she swallows down the lump in her throat and says, “Parental expectations too high.”

He searches her face. “Wall-punching levels of pressure?”

Overwhelmed, she takes a step back from him. “Exactly.”

“Well, thank god you never feel like that anymore.”

She huffs. “Just like you never feel lonely or ignored.”

They share a wry grin.

“So,” she says, breaking the moment by tossing the book onto her desk, where it lands with a _thwap_. “I don’t know about you, but I’m freaking exhausted.”

Ben glances at her bed. “I could sleep.”

He grabs his bag and retreats into the bathroom while she flips back her comforter, removes her glasses, and tucks herself against the wall, trying to leave enough space for him on her full mattress.

When he reenters the room, he’s wearing a t-shirt and boxers. She’s too tired to do anything more about the desire unspooling in her stomach than stare.

He pauses at the edge of the bed. “Is there—should I turn off the light or something?”

She hums, pointing. “Over on that wall.”

Plenty of moonlight spills in through her window, casting the room in a silvery sheen as Ben crosses back over to her. He hesitates a second, and then the mattress dips with his weight.

“Okay?” he asks, tugging the covers up over him.

She burrows in close to his side, pressing her face into his shoulder and slinging her leg over his hips before saying, “Okay.”

Just like the last time they’d shared a bed, she finds herself asleep within seconds.

###

Devi wakes up like high tide creeping in, waves pushing further and further up the shore of consciousness.

“Hey,” Ben says, his arm curling tighter around her middle.

“Hey,” she says back, squeezing her thighs together around his knee.

Nothing else needs to be said for the time being, so they lay like that, cartographer hands lazily gauging the topography of each other’s bodies.

Eventually, Ben’s hands turn urgent and Devi’s breathing grows ragged, and she twists around in his arms to face him.

“Hey,” he says again, his voice rough.

Instead of answering him, she threads her arm under his so she can press him closer with a palm between his shoulders and drinks down his whine of approval.

From there, the sex is a haze of _yes, there_ s and match-strike fingers and the blinding gleam of the sun in Devi’s chest growing ever-brighter.

“So,” he says afterward, when they’re splayed over her mattress, legs tangled and breathing steadying in synch. “A pretty legendary first sleepover for this place, right?”

She’s too overwhelmed by the gravitational pull of the _feeling_ in her chest to say anything witty or playfully biting. “Yeah. I—I could get used to this, honestly.”

Ben searches out her hand, lifting it to his face and brushing his lips over her knuckles.

She sits up after another peaceful moment and leans across him to get her phone from the nightstand.

“What are your plans for the day?” he asks, watching her.

“I’m supposed to be meeting Fab and El in an hour because, um…” She wets her lips.

“Today marks one year since your dad got diagnosed,” he fills in.

She cuts surprised eyes over at him. “You remembered.”

“Yeah,” he says simply, as if it’s not a really touching gesture, his careful attention.

She feels like she’s getting sucked into herself. Or maybe it’s that Ben is, filling her chest until she’s too full.

“What’re you doing after that?” he asks, and he sounds so tentative, she wonders how obvious it is that she’s seconds away from losing it.

“Um, I, uh—” She breaks off, shaking her head to clear it. “I’m taking a trip down to Malibu.”

“Malibu?”

“Yeah, the cliffs there. He, uh, he used to like to go.”

“Well, have…” He seems to reconsider what he’d been about to say at the last second, and finishes, “Catharsis.”

Devi snorts. “Yeah, thanks.”

“I was gonna—”

“I know,” she says.

“—and it didn’t seem right.”

“It’s cool, dude. I get it.”

“Cool.”

She watches him as he gets out of bed, gathering his clothes.

“Maybe,” she says suddenly, “I could come by your place Sunday, though. We could watch your movie.”

He turns back to her, delighted surprise all over his face. “ _The Secret of NIMH_.”

“Yeah,” she says, “that one.”

He tugs on his shirt. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“And then we could, uh, carpool to work the next morning.

He somehow looks even more pleased. “That works, yeah.”

She smiles, but grows serious a second later. “I’m driving, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“And we have to be discreet.”

“Of course. As soon as we get to work, I have no idea who you are.”

She tries, and totally fails, to maintain her unamused expression.

“Cool,” she says. “Now hurry up and get out of here.”

“Tell Fabiola and Eleanor I say hello,” Ben says, fishing a fresh pair of pants out of his bag.

“Sure. It’ll be a perfect segue into discussing your numerous faults.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Oh, I’m not kidding.”

He widens his eyes at her.

She laughs as she gets up out of the bed. “If it makes you feel better, we’ll discuss your virtues, too.”

He considers that as they walk over to the door. “It doesn’t, especially.”

She shrugs, and then placates him with a lingering kiss. “And now?”

His eyes blink open slowly. “Okay, yeah. That worked.”

She grins as she opens up her door. “Knew it would.”

###

Eleanor’s the first one to burst into tears, and Devi really should have predicted that’d be the case.

“Sorry,” she says, swiping frantically under her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“We’re not even out of the parking lot yet,” Fabiola says under her breath, eyes darting around at the other people milling about the strip mall.

“I know,” Eleanor says with a hiccup. “It’s just—today’s a day for somber reflection and I know it should be about M-Mohan and what a great man he was but I keep finding myself thinking about where I’d be if Devi hadn’t moved back and she decided to move back because of Mohan’s d-d-diagnosis of which today—”

“Girl, breathe,” Devi interjects with alarm.

Eleanor sucks in a shuddering gulp of air.

“All I need from you guys today,” Devi says, slinging her arm around Eleanor’s shoulders and tugging her into a sideways hug, “is for you to show up. And you’ve already done that.”

“Okay,” Elenaor says.

“I don’t need you to feel the exact thing I’m feeling. He wasn’t your dad.”

“Okay,” Eleanor says again.

Devi presses a kiss into the top of her head before letting go. And when they both glance up at Fabiola, it’s to see her eyes welling with tears.

“Oh, my god, you guys,” Devi says, laughing wetly. “Knock it off.”

“That was just really beautiful,” Fabiola says, smiling all proud-mother-hen at Devi.

“If we’re gonna keep doing this, I’m going to need, like, ten cups of coffee immediately,” Devi says warningly, and her voice only wobbles a little.

Once they’re seated and served their drinks—including a full carafe of coffee—Fabiola lifts her juice glass.

She takes a second to breathe in deeply through her nose, steadying herself, and then says, “To Mohan.”

A few tears dribble down Devi’s cheeks as she holds up her mug. “To Mohan.”

Eleanor raises her glass even higher than Devi and Fabiola’s, catching their rims with the base of her cup, and declares in her for-the-cheap-seats voice, “To Mohan!”

Devi hides behind the act of taking a drink for a prolonged moment, thinking of her dad. Of the way he’d test out new lecture material on her and of his collection of bowties. Of accompanying him to the tennis courts every summer. Of the thoughtful comments he used to leave in the margins of her already-graded essays hung on the fridge. Of his laughter.

She sets her cup down with a _thud_.

Eleanor reaches over and rubs a few circles between Devi’s shoulders.

“So, Ben,” Devi says, a desperate invitation.

“Ooh, yay!” Eleanor says.

Fabiola doesn’t say anything. She simply smirks.

“Well?” Devi says to her. “Eleanor obviously liked him.”

“Mm-hmm,” Eleanor says. “He’s super cute for you.”

“I,” Fabiola says, and then pauses dramatically before finishing, “don’t disagree with that assessment.”

“But…” Devi prompts, rolling her wrist.

“No,” Fabiola says. “That’s really all I have to say. I mean, you’re already aware of my potential objections.”

“Yeah,” Eleanor says. “Which is why she needs more from you than ‘don’t disagree’ as affirmation, dummy.”

Devi jabs her thumb at Eleanor. “What she said.”

Fabiola rolls her eyes up toward the ceiling but nods. “You look happy…lighter. And I like seeing you like that.”

“Cute, cute, cute,” Eleanor says in agreement, poking Devi in the arm with each repetition.

“But what’s most important,” Fabiola says, “is that _you_ have a favorable opinion of him.”

Before Devi can say anything in response to that, their waiter stops by for their orders. Once he’s gone again, Devi plucks a straw wrapper off the table and starts winding it around her pointer finger.

“Do you really think I’m gonna fuck things up?” she asks quietly.

Fabiola sits up straighter in the booth, frowning. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s not _not_ what you said, either.”

“Devi,” Fabiola says with a sigh. “I can’t predict the future.”

“Well, I can,” Eleanor says. “And I say this relationship lasts.”

“You don’t think I’m gonna get bored when it stops being convenient?” Devi asks.

“Is it especially convenient?” Fabiola interjects, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Devi doesn’t answer, though. She’s as wound as the straw wrapper. “He’s way more invested than I am. Or has been for longer. I’m gonna hurt his feelings. I could, like, literally crush him.”

“Look at you,” Eleanor says. “All desperate and out of control.”

Devi’s breath hitches in her throat. “Why are you saying that like it’s a good thing?”

“Because that’s the best part about a new relationship,” Eleanor says. “Runaway emotions.”

As if it had been waiting for the acknowledgement, the dense concentration of _Ben_ in her chest swirls back to life.

“Fuck,” Devi says. And then, so her friends have a little context, adds, “He spent the night at my place.”

“Wow,” Fabiola says at the same time Eleanor lets out a low whistle.

A vise tightens around her chest. “Fuck.”

“This is a big deal for you,” Eleanor says.

Devi’s having a harder and harder time drawing breath. “It’s weird, right? You guys think it’s totally weird.”

“That you like him?” Eleanor asks. “Why would that be weird?”

“Oh god, it is. It’s weird that I let him stay over.” Devi shakes her head back and forth so fast she gets a little dizzy. “We’re moving too fast, and I _never_ do that. So something’s wrong here, clearly!”

“Whoa,” Fabiola says.

Eleanor grabs onto Devi’s chin. “You’re spiraling!”

“I know!” Devi says, staring wide-eyed back at her.

“Well stop it!” Eleanor releases her. “You were blissfully happy yesterday, and you’re not about to talk yourself out of that.”

“Especially not with logic that flawed,” Fabiola says.

Both Devi and Eleanor stare at her, uncomprehending.

She elaborates. “All your other relationships ended. So, by that logic, doing something different would be more likely to yield different results.”

Eleanor turns a smug grin on Devi, as if she’s the one who made the point. “So there! Nothing’s wrong.”

Their breakfast arrives then, giving Devi a second to breathe.

“You good?” Fabiola asks once their waiter leaves again.

“Sure,” Devi says…unconvincingly, judging by Fabiola’s expression. But neither of her friends push it, which Devi appreciates.

If she’s not allowed to be a mess today, well. When would it be allowed?

###

She’s sitting with her legs dangling over the edge of a cliff and scrolling through photos of her dad, tears streaming silently down her face, when she hears behind her the voice of the first and last person she feels like sharing this moment with.

“Devi?”

She turns in time to see Nalini across the street, stepping off the motorbike that used to be Mohan’s, and feels a stab of anger.

How _dare_ she be here, driving that. Like it doesn’t rip Devi wide open to see it.

She whips back around, keeping her eyes trained on the ocean.

“Devi?” Nalini repeats, her voice much closer this time. And then, when Devi doesn’t so much as twitch, says, “I see you’re going to insist on behaving like a child.”

A brittle laugh crackles its way out of Devi’s throat. “That’s what you want to say to me right now?”

Nalini _hmm_ s. “Is there something else you were expecting?”

“Nope,” Devi says, lifting her phone back in front of her face.

She’d left off on a picture of Nalini and Mohan—one she’d surreptitiously snapped of them at an end-of-summer neighborhood barbeque three years ago.

A low moan escapes her.

“ _Kanna_ …?”

Wordlessly, Devi holds up her phone.

“Oh,” Nalini says after a beat, her voice haggard with the effort to hold back her own tears. She hands the phone back down. A moment of tense silence spreads out between them, then, “I brought soup.”

Devi stares at her father’s smile. “Huh?”

“From Marmalade Cafe.”

Devi suddenly smells frying bacon, can feel the chill of air conditioning skitter up her arms. She has this perfect picture of her dad leaning against the pickup counter on Sunday mornings in July, backlit and towering. If she were to reach up, would she feel the scratch of his beard under her fingertips—like a phantom limb.

She turns around and looks up into her mother’s face.

Nalini manages to look more severe than the picture Devi keeps in her head, deep frown lines and bruise-colored bags under her eyes.

“You don’t get to have it both ways,” Devi says, fighting back against the sticky tar pit of concern currently dragging her stomach under.

Nalini tilts her head, the gesture of confusion elegantly understated.

“Our relationship,” Devi explains as she tucks her phone into the pocket of her hoodie and stands. “You don’t get to wash your hands of me and ask me to keep you company while you mourn.”

“Wash my hands of you?” Nalini asks, frown deepening.

Devi rolls her eyes and starts to push around her mom, headed for her car. “Whatever.”

Nalini catches her by the arm, though. “I called,” she says, her voice crackling lightning. “Many, many times.”

“I know,” Devi says, tugging away. “I ignored you.”

“You’d admit that, and still stand there, shutting me out for _washing my hands_ of you?”

“You left a dozen messages, and never once apologized!”

Nalini stands there, looking stunned, as the wind snatches Devi’s outburst out from between them.

After a couple seconds, Nalini pulls her wrap more tightly around her shoulders and asks, “What would you have me apologize for?”

Devi laughs darkly. “The fact that you’d even ask that means this conversation isn’t worth my time.”

Nalini stays hot on her trail as she stomps for the car, though. “I lost half my family the day your father died, and I don’t understand why you’re keeping me from the other half.”

A dizzying sense of déjà vu forces Devi to stop walking away.

“You’re actively ruining it,” she says, almost to herself.

Nalini hears her, though. “Devi, I am your _mother_.”

“So?” Devi asks, whirling around to face her again.

“So you will address me with respect!”

“Oh,” Devi says. “You mean like you’ve always respected me and my life choices?”

“You want to be self-sufficient, I understand,” Nalini says, fighting to maintain control of herself. “But that doesn’t have to mean you shut me out completely.”

“You think _that’s_ why I haven’t called you back in months?” Devi asks, a disbelieving laugh escaping her. “Because I’m trying to assert my independence?”

Nalini stands there, jaw rigid and spine straight as an arrow. She’s so sure of herself. Even her question of, “Is it not?” is offered up like a challenge.

Devi can feel her temper in the pit of her stomach like lit fireworks seconds from exploding, and yet—she can’t suppress the sparks of admiration at her mother’s self-assurance, either. Can’t help craving it for herself.

“Do you even remember what you said to me?” she asks. “The last time we spoke.”

“Of course,” Nalini says, jerking up her chin. “I told you to look into transferring to a better school so—”

“You told me,” Devi says, raising her voice to cut Nalini off, “that I was wasting my time at UCLA because anything I did there was doomed to be a disappointment. You told me moving closer to be with Dad was _worthless_.”

“Devi, your talents are wasted at such a—”

The fireworks fizzle up her throat and burst out of her completely. “And you don’t even feel sorry about that!?”

“I don’t want you to regret the choices you made!” Nalini yells back.

“The only thing I regret,” Devi says, fumbling to work her keys out of the pocket of her shorts, “is wasting so much of my time caring about what you think of me. It’s never going to be good enough. It’s never going to be right.”

“That’s not true,” Nalini says, hands balling into fists. Like she’s trying to stop herself from reaching out to restrain Devi a second time. “I only want what’s best—”

“ _For you_ ,” Devi finishes. “You want me to do what’s best only if it fits with the picture in your head.”

Nalini’s nostrils flare, and there’s a storm darkening her eyes. “You are not listening!”

“Goodbye, Mom,” Devi says, nodding once. “Enjoy your soup.”

With that, Devi runs the rest of the way to her car, slams the door closed behind her, and peels out of the parking lot.

She only manages four minutes of driving before the shaking in her hands demands that she pull over.

###

“You’re early,” Ben says when he answers the door on Sunday with a smile. “We said four o’clock, right?”

Devi isn’t expecting the way seeing him feels like slipping into bed after a long day, isn’t expecting the relief of it. Instead of answering his question, she surges into him, pressing her face into the top of his shoulder and throwing her arms around his waist.

“Good to see you, too,” he says with a low chuckle, turning his face into her hair.

She tries to return the sentiment, but all that comes out is a pitiful little whimper.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

She shakes her head.

“Is it still…are you thinking about yesterday?”

She jolts, pulling away from him then. “Who told you about yesterday?”

He raises his eyebrows as he pushes the door closed and then speaks slowly and clearly. “You told me about yesterday.”

She blinks. “Oh! You just mean that it was the anniversary.”

“Yeah,” he says. Then, “Why? Did something happen?”

Her expression gives her away.

Ben frowns. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She’s about to say no, thank you. She hasn’t even told Fabiola and Eleanor about seeing Nalini. In fact, she’s barely processed it herself. 

But…

“It might take a while,” she says, hedging. “To explain it all.”

He nods. “The night is young.”

“And the movie?” she asks.

“Isn’t going anywhere,” he says, reaching for her hand, tugging her over to the couch.

“Okay,” Devi says, letting out a slow breath as they settle and then closing her eyes. Where to start… “I was originally planning on going to Columbia for my grad school.”

She opens her eyes to find him watching her with an almost comical look of concentration. “But then your dad got sick.”

“Right,” she says, tears biting at her eyes. “And I had gotten into UCLA. I was even kind of excited about the program. So I scrambled to sort out enrollment and housing and I could have just moved back in with my parents but…” She pauses, takes in a shaky breath. “My mom and I have always had a weird relationship. Or maybe intense is the right word. I, uh, I get my stubbornness from her.”

That makes Ben smile. “Noted.”

Devi’s hand quivers against his warm palm. “She would have hated doing it all alone. There was so much driving, so many appointments. And he got really bad really fast. She would have…being alone through that…” She swallows thickly. “But she resented me. For making the choice to move back and help out without talking to her about it.”

“That’s probably not true,” he says gently.

“No, it is,” Devi says. “She told me so. To my face.”

He frowns.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “It was bad. I had gone over for lunch, and it was, like, two days after the funeral. One of the first things she said to me when I was through the door was that I should start fixing everything I’d fucked by coming back to California. It was like…” The tears start falling in earnest. “Like she was relieved to have Dad gone. Like she’d been waiting for that problem to solve itself so she could focus on another.”

“Maybe she was.”

Devi pulls her hand out of Ben’s to scrub at the tear-tracks on her cheeks. “Was what?”

“Relieved,” he says. “That’s not an uncommon thing with long-term illness.”

Devi doesn’t want to admit he has a point, but immediately her mind flashes to the first time Mohan had gotten bad enough to need an overnight hospital stay, to waking up in the uncomfortable recliner to realize Nalini’s sobbing had been what broke her fitful sleep. She remembers all the weight her mom lost, until she was all protruding hip bones and sharp elbows.

“She didn’t have to be so obvious about it,” Devi says, knowing she’s being just a little unfair, “so quickly.”

Ben smiles. “Okay.”

“Anyway, that wasn’t the only thing that pissed me off.”

“Oh?”

Devi chooses not to acknowledge his feigned surprise. “She just kept going on and on about how I’d wasted my time moving back when all I could think was how stupid it’d been to move away in the first place. How I’d lost so much time with him. How I was always gonna wonder when and how I could have had more. And she had the audacity to say she was _disappointed_ in me for—”

When she breaks off with a distressed cry, Ben reaches over and pulls her into him. She sucks in a deep breath of his musky deodorant, letting it center her.

“That was a couple months ago,” she says, speaking into his chest. “And I hadn’t spoken to her since then…until yesterday.”

“Were you, uh—” Ben’s voice rumbles under her ear. “Did you plan that, or…?”

She sits up. “No.”

He cups her jaw, rubs a thumb against her cheek. “What happened?”

“My dad really did love that spot,” she says, sniffling. “I guess we both had the idea to go there, think about him.”

“Is that what you guys talked about?” he asks, getting up from the couch to retrieve the tissue box.

She accepts it, setting it in her lap before tugging a tissue out to wipe her cheeks. Giving herself a second before she admits, “I think that’s what she wanted to talk about. She probably would have pretended we weren’t even fighting, if I’d let her.”

“But you didn’t,” he says.

A laugh burbles out of her at how fond he sounds, but she grows sober again a second later. “Eleanor and Fabiola have been on me to talk to her for weeks now.”

Ben slides his hand down her thigh. It’s warm—a little clammy, even—and wide enough to cover her whole knee. He doesn’t say anything, though. Just waits patiently for her to offer more.

She takes in a deep breath through her nose, savoring the way his presence here and now warms her from the inside out.

“I haven’t told them,” she says after a moment, after covering his hand with her own and squeezing, “how much I want to.”

He’s rubbing his thumb in a wide arc against her skin. “Why not?”

Devi nods, thinking about the question. She _knows_ why, of course. She’s just never put it into words before.

“It would have felt like letting her win,” she says. “Or, like…it would have been admitting weakness. I needed to pretend it wasn’t any more complicated than she hurt my feelings one too many times and I’d reached my limit. The end. Relationship over.”

“Devi,” Ben says, shaking his head, “she’s your mom. Of _course_ it’s complicated.”

“ _I_ know that,” she says, using her nails when she squeezes his hand this time.

“Fabiola and Eleanor know it, too, I’d bet,” he says, barely even flinching.

“Yeah,” she admits reluctantly. “I still had to pretend like it wasn’t, though. It was easier that way.”

“You’re using past tense,” he says, whispering the observation. Like he’s trying to give her plausible deniability. Don’t talk about it if you still want to pretend.

She nods, though. “Seeing her again…” She swallows, her throat feeling too thick. “She…she looked bad, Ben. Like, really bad.”

He presses his lips into a thin line, thinking. Finally, he says, “You don’t have to take on the responsibility of caring. You know, actively. You can acknowledge you’re worried without doing anything about it.”

She leans forward to press a swift kiss to his cheek, and then lingers there as she asks, “What made you do it? Say yes to keeping tabs on your dad?”

He blows out a gusty breath, and she pulls away when it tickles her neck, her shoulder.

“I don’t think I had a reason, really. There was no moment of clarity, no weighing the pros and cons.”

“Okay,” she says, trying not to sound too disappointed.

“I just,” he says, and then pauses. She’s never known him to struggle for words like this. “I like to believe it means something—family. Having people you can turn to no matter what’s happening in your life. And even though my mom and dad have clearly never thought about it that way, I’ll be damned if I let them take _that_ away from me, too. It’d be like…”

“They win. Ultimately. When it matters most,” she finishes for him.

“Yeah.”

They’re both quiet for a while.

“That doesn’t really help me with my thing,” Devi says.

Ben snorts. “Well, it’s not like you have to decide now.

“No,” she agrees, worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth. “I guess not.”

###

In the end, Nalini makes the decision for Devi.

She’s barely been home from work more than ten minutes on Monday evening when there’s a knock at her door. Devi opens it to find her mom standing there, and she’s so surprised, she barks the word, “What?”

Nalini raises her eyebrows, waits a moment. Then says, “Are you going to invite me into your home?”

Devi’s blinking too fast. “Huh?”

Nalini nods. “I’ve come…” She trails off, takes a deep breath in before starting again. “It occurred to me, after our–our encounter,” she says, “that perhaps it should be my responsibility. To take the first steps.”

“Into my apartment?” Devi asks dumbly.

Nalini smiles a wan smile. “To bridge this—” she gestures between them, “—this divide between us.”

“You’ve literally never come here before.”

“I’m aware,” Nalini says, raising her eyebrows.

“I’m, uh—” Devi casts a sidelong glance at the freshly plastered hole in the wall. “I kinda liked it that way.”

“Devi, please,” Nalini says, and it sounds impatient—years and years of _why do I have to eat that_ and _and I don’t want to go there_ and _it’s not fair_ s swirl through Devi’s mind—but there’s also a touch of desperation. “I’m trying.”

“Okay,” Devi says. “But I-I wasn’t expecting company, and the place is not—”

“I didn’t come here to criticize your housekeeping.”

Devi studies Nalini’s face. The dark circles under her eyes could be black holes, preparing to suck her mother inside herself, permanently.

“Okay,” she says, letting the door fall open and stepping out of the way. “Come in.”

She feels her heart hiccup, watching Nalini step gingerly through the doorway and venture inside. After a second of stolid observation, her mom pulls out the desk chair and perches on the edge of it.

“You always did like to use those as nightlights,” she says after a long moment, pointing at the string of lights Devi has hung above her bed.

“Uh-huh,” Devi says, because there’s not much else she can do with that comment.

Seeming to realize this, Nalini lets out a sharp breath. “I never meant to make you feel like you didn’t have options. That I would think less of you for doing something I hadn’t—something unconventional.”

It’s not an apology, Devi can’t help but notice, but it still takes her out at the knees. She sinks down onto the edge of her mattress.

Nalini licks her lips and continues. “When I said— When you moved back here, and I—” She stops, shakes her head, and tries again. “Devi, I left behind the life I’d known in India to move here with your father to start a family, and there are some days I feel like I’ll never be able to find the clarity of having a _true home_ again.”

Stunned, Devi says, “That sucks, Mom.”

Nalini laughs, but she’s crying, too. “It’s the worst feeling in the world, resenting someone you love. Especially when you’d been counting on having them around forever. When the resentment stops growing with you, changing as you do, as your relationship does—it has the opportunity to crystalize and…it can trap you.”

“I don’t understand—” Devi starts to say.

“I didn’t want you to look back on your move, and wish for all you’d given up to be here for your father…for me. That’s all I meant when I—by what I said.”

Devi blinks, processing. Her mind snags on the admission that her move had been for Nalini’s benefit, too. That she’d leaned on Devi as much as Mohan had in those last couple months. And before she realizes what she’s doing, Devi’s standing and throwing her arms around her mother’s neck.

“You’re so bad at expressing yourself,” she says into Nalini’s hair, and then inhales the faint whiff of coconut oil as deeply as her lungs allow.

Nalini grasps at Devi’s arm, holding her in place. “Your father was much better at imparting wisdom.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Nalini’s responding laugh is more of a sigh, really.

Devi waits until her back truly starts to protest to stand and move away again.

“Okay,” she says, sitting back on her bed. “So.”

Nalini twists a bangle around and around on her forearm, also at a loss.

“I can, uh—call you,” Devi says. “So we can go to lunch or something. Maybe this weekend.”

“Yes,” Nalini says. “I would like that.”

Devi smiles, hoping she’s not giving away too much when she says, “Yeah. Me too.”

###

Devi: _MAYDAY_

Eleanor: _Hello, ma’am, welcome to the crisis control center. Please state the nature of your emergency._

Devi: _Nalini just left my apartment_

Eleanor: _!!_

Fabiola: _Are you serious?_

Devi: _As a crashing plane_

Ben: _Did you mean to include me in this text?_

Devi: _omg I obviously did._

Ben: _Cool._

Fabiola: _What happened!?_

Devi: _Kinda too much to text._

Devi: _Will trade samosas for intel._

Eleanor: _Can we even all fit in that lil baby apartment of yours?_

Devi: _Probably not. Can I come to yours?_

Fabiola: _Jonah’s hosting a game night._

Fabiola: _So no. :(_

Devi: _Ugh, Jonah ruins everything._

Ben: _You could all come to my place._

Eleanor: _Look at that! Your strapping new boyfriend comes through!_

Devi: _Gross_

Devi: _But, like, thanks, dude._

Eleanor: _Fab and I are on the samosas!_

Fabiola: _Where are we bringing them, exactly?_

Devi: _I just texted you the address._

Fabiola: _Got it! Be there in 40._

###

“Holy crap,” Eleanor says when Devi opens the door. “This place is nice as hell!”

“Is that a leather sectional?” Fabiola asks, setting the food down on the table.

“Yeah,” Devi says, peering into the paper bag.

“Hi,” Ben says, waving awkwardly from the kitchen doorway. “Welcome, I guess.”

“How loaded are you, exactly?” Eleanor asks him, running her finger along the edge of the table.

Fabiola looks up from untying her tennis shoes. “Don’t be rude, Eleanor.”

“Sorry,” Eleanor says, cringing.

“Nah,” Devi says, “I kinda wanna hear him answer.”

Ben shoots her a playful glare.

“What?” she says. “You’re not getting any sympathy from me, ya sad rich boy.”

“Are you sad?” Eleanor asks, pouting out her lower lip.

Ben raises his eyebrows at her. “I mean, sometimes.”

“His dad didn’t pay enough attention to him when he was a kid,” Devi says, spreading the take-out on the table.

“So glad I offered to host this impromptu gathering.”

“Aw.” Devi pulls a face at Fabiola, who purses her lips, clearly trying not to look as amused as she is. “Right now is one of the times he’s sad.”

Fabiola turns her gaze on Ben and clears her throat. “Thank you for having us. Seriously.”

Ben laughs. “Uh-huh.”

“What do you guys want to drink?” Devi asks, pointing at Fab and then Eleanor.

“Do you have lemon?” Eleanor asks Ben.

“I don’t think so.”

“Just hot water, then,” she says.

“Room temperature’s fine with me,” Fabiola says, pulling out one of the seats at the table and dropping into it.

“Are you not gonna ask what I want to drink?” Ben asks as she passes him. “You know, as long as you’re pretending like you own the place.”

“Nope,” she says, blowing him a kiss.

“You seem happy for someone who just declared a group emergency,” Fabiola says.

“Were you two canoodling before we arrived?” Eleanor asks with an eyebrow waggle.

“On my fancy leather couch,” Ben says somberly.

“Do you have a kettle?” Devi asks before either Fabiola or Eleanor can sit with that comment, brandishing a mug. “Or, like, what’s your hot water sitch like?”

“I got it,” Ben says with an impish grin, grabbing the mug from her and walking over to a water cooler she’d never noticed before this moment.

“Definite canoodling,” Eleanor stage-whispers to Fabiola.

“So, Nalini,” Fab says loudly. “She just showed up out of the blue?”

“Well,” Devi says, taking a seat, a glass of water in each hand. “It wasn’t totally out of the blue. I, uh, might have seen her Saturday.”

“What?” Eleanor says, slapping the table with both palms just as Ben sets the mug of hot water down. Some of it slops over the side. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Devi raises her eyebrows. “Because it didn’t go well that time, and I knew you would be making that face at me, all hopeful and shit.”

“Sorry,” Eleanor says, but her face doesn’t change in the slightest.

“That time?” Fabiola asks.

Devi grins.

“Oh, my god,” Eleanor says, smacking the table again. “Oh, my god, you guys totally made up!”

“Do you want a towel, or…?” Ben asks her.

She waves his question away.

“Well,” Devi says, “kinda. I mean, she didn’t apologize, exactly, but we talked, and, I don’t know. I feel like we might. Soon, even.”

“What’s with the _mayday_ , then?” Fabiola asks.

“I dunno.” Devi ducks her head. “I wanted you guys around in case I thought about it and started to regret.”

“You could have chosen a less urgent distress signal,” Fabiola says, pouting a little.

“Sorry,” Devi says, barely feeling it. “I just needed a reminder.”

“Of what?” Eleanor asks.

“That no matter how much shit gets messed up with my other one, I always have the family I choose.” Devi catches Ben’s eye. “The one that comes through no matter what’s happening in my life.”

He blinks at her, clearly caught off guard.

“Aww,” Eleanor says. “See, she’s being cute. I think this is a good sign—a sign of healing!”

Fabiola ignores Eleanor. “You’re ready to include him in that description already?”

Ben raises his eyebrows, looking to Fabiola, then Devi and back again.

“Yes,” Devi says forcefully. “We’re already including Ben. Are you saying you don’t feel this sizzling group chemistry?”

Eleanor points emphatically at her. “That’s what I’m feeling!”

Fabiola nods after a second, accepting everything with the faintest suggestion of a grin. “Fine.”

“Good,” Devi says.

Ben finds Devi’s knee under the table and gives it a squeeze.

“I mean, I do still feel like I’ve been lured here under false pretenses,” Fabiola says.

“I’ll make dinner Friday night,” Devi says.

The grin fully deploys. “It’s a start.”

“You’re not invited to that one,” Devi tells Ben. “It’s a girls-only thing.”

“No problem,” he says. “The strapping boyfriend’s totally cool sitting that out.”

Devi groans as Eleanor giggles.

“I hate you guys,” Devi says to the two of them.

“Come now,” Eleanor says, sipping her hot water primly. “We all know that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Devi grins, happy to have been understood.

###

“Is this for real?” Devi asks the next night. “All her problems are going to be fixed by this glowing MacGuffin amulet?”

“Well, this _is_ a Don Bluth production,” Ben says, adjusting the pillow they have propped against the arm of the sofa before curling his arm tightly around her once more. “Sometimes you get a little magical side plot, you know, for shits and giggles.”

“This movie hasn’t made any sense.”

“Again I say, this is a Don Bluth production.”

“You take that back,” she says, wapping at his elbow. “I love _Anastasia_.”

“God, Athena, the historical inaccuracies. Talk about a movie that makes no fucking sense.”

“I know,” she says, “I know. But the romance slaps.”

“You love Dimitri, don’t you?”

“He has nice hair,” she says, going for noncommittal.

“And he’s roguish,” Ben says, his lips at her ear.

“The soundtrack’s pretty good, too,” she says, ignoring him and the delighted spark that zips up her spine.

“Yeah, okay. There are some bangers. Some emotionally gripping ballads.”

“Thank you. Exactly.”

“Honestly,” Ben says a couple minutes later, when the credits start to roll, “that was way worse than I remember it being.”

“Oh, my god,” Devi says, shifting in his arms until she’s facing him. “Are you telling me I watched that nonsense for nothing?”

“I mean, Mrs. Brisby was still crush-worthy.”

“Her only personality trait was being a mother,” Devi says. “She’s honestly kinda tragic.”

“I don’t disagree, necessarily,” he says, looking like he just licked something sour, “but it does kinda pain me to hear you criticize her.”

“Admit it,” Devi says, poking him in the chest. “You’ve outgrown her.”

Ben considers this. “I suppose my affections have migrated elsewhere.”

“Sven the reindeer?” she guesses.

“Exactly.”

“Knew it.”

He studies her for a second, grinning. “Did you also know that I’m falling in love with you?”

She freezes for a second, totally engulfed by the heat of the sun in her chest. And then she’s closing the minimal distance, a kiss dripping slow and thick from her lips. 

“Did I ever tell you that I kinda thought of you as the white rabbit from _Alice in Wonderland_ our first night together?” she asks when she eventually pulls away.

He frowns, eyes still closed. “Interesting segue.”

“I let you lead me into Wonderland, and I never really got back out.”

He blinks, eyes opening. “Oh.” And a moment later. “ _Oh_.”

“It’s been one hell of an adventure,” she says, tracing his jaw.

“You say that like it’s over,” he says, lips at her hairline. “But we’ve only just answered the call.”

“I hope whatever comes next makes more sense than the movie we just watched.”

“Don’t be jealous, Athena,” he says, and she can feel his lips stretching into a smile. “I just admitted that I like you more than Mrs. Brisby.”

“You just admitted that you _love_ me,” she says.

“You admitted it back.”

“Not in so many words,” she says, punching forward with her knee.

“Who needs words when your face is an open book?” he says, catching her knee between his thighs.

She gasps. “You take that back! I’m a god! All majestic and unknowable and shit.”

Ben licks his lips. “What’s a god to a lawyer?”

“You’re a paralegal. Apparently.”

“Semantics.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You trying to turn me on?”

“Knew you loved my vocabulary.”

“Love it more when you shut up and—”

He kisses her then, writing the end of her sentence exactly as she’d wanted.


End file.
